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Ratcliffc Hicks. 



OBSERVATIONS 



BY / 
RATCLIFFE HICKS 



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BY 

RATCLIFFE HICKS 



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To 

My Sister 
MINNIE HELLEN HICKS 

WHOSE SISTERLY LOVE AND DEVOTION 

I HOLD AS ONE OF THE MOST PRECIOUS 

AND SACRED TREASURES OF MY LIFE 

I Dedicate this Book. 



INTRODUCTION 

AAT'HOEVER cares to peruse 
these pages will soon learn 
that they contain no studied descrip- 
tion and no learned dissertation, but 
are simply the offhand utterances of 
a man who for twenty-five years was 
deeply absorbed in business cares, 
and who has jotted down, from time 
to time (i 898-1 899), a few observa- 
tions for his own amusement and 
occupation, while compelled to seek 
rest and recreation in foreign lands. 

I beg the kind indulgence of the 
reader, and ask him to remember 
how and why they were written. 

Ratcliffe Hicks. 



OBSERVATIONS 



FIRST LETTER 

A FTER a delightful voyage across 
the Atlantic I arrived in Havre. 
Most of the way it was like the waters 
of Long Island Sound. 

The novelty of European life and 
scenery has worn off for me, after 
having crossed the Atlantic Ocean 
over forty times. More than a whole 
year of my life I have spent on that 
ocean. I often think that it is a 
great mistake to visit any place more 



2 Observations 

than once, and even to stay too long 
there, for first impressions soon dim 
— the best and most enjoyable of 
all — and the place loses its marked 
aspects, and its memories fade into 
indistinctness. I think that is the 
opinion of all travelers. Who would 
not like to remember New York, 
London, or Paris, as it appeared to 
him on his first visit ? 

But no matter how many times you 
visit Europe there are some things 
that will ever appear new or odd to 
an American : 

To see cattle drawing heavy loads 
by their horns, and not their shoul- 
ders, and cows used in place of oxen. 

To see men and women wearing 
wooden shoes that perhaps their 



Observations 3 

fathers and grandfathers before them 
wore. 

To see women and dogs hitched 
up together, drawing heavy loads. 

It is estimated that in Germany- 
women and dogs do more hauHng 
than all the combined railroads. 

To see cemeteries where they dig 
up the bodies after four years, saving 
only the skulls, cleaning and mark- 
ing them, and arranging them family- 
wise in a great open vault as is done 
in parts of Austria. 

To see the ever present soldier and 
the omnipotent officer on horseback, 
and in many countries of Europe con- 
sidered the only human being worthy 
to be commemorated by a public 
statue. 



4 Observations 

To see on Sunday gowned priests 
attending horse-races, and likewise 
stern Lutheran clergymen rolling ten- 
pins in public places. 

To see aged and respectable men 
and women sitting around a public 
gaming-table as if they were attend- 
ing an afternoon tea. 

To see men kissing each other on 
the streets. 

To see most Frenchwomen pull up 
their dresses waist-high to find the 
pocket they now put in their petti- 
coat. 

These and a hundred other pecul- 
iarities can never fail to make a fresh 
impression upon an American. 

By traveling you soon learn that 
human nature is about the same the 



Observations 5 

world over, and not to think too 
despairingly of any nation. Just as 
there are good and bad Americans, 
there are good and bad French- 
men, Englishmen, Irishmen, Germans, 
Spaniards, Chinese, and Negroes. 
I dislike to hear people speak dis- 
respectfully of any nation. They 
all have their good qualities and 
their faults, the same as we Ameri- 
cans. I have never had or seen 
any trouble about getting along any- 
where, and no one will if they only 
observe the Golden Rule, " Do unto 
others as you would that they should 
do unto you." Your pocketbook 
may suffer a little, but your life 
and property will be well cared 
for. 



6 Observations 

" I detect more good than evil in Humanity ; 
Love lights more fires than hate extin- 
guishes." 

One thing I do like about all these 
European nations is their strict ob- 
servance of law and order. The life 
and property of the humblest citizen 
are as safe as that of any king or 
emperor. It has been well said that 
each man's house is his castle, that 
no king dare molest him, or it, even 
though the roof may be open to the 
winds and rains, and he himself be 
clad in rags. You remember the 
story of the humble German citizen, 
who refused to sell or vacate his 
house in order that the emperor might 
enlarge his palace, and the emperor 
had to wait until the man died. 



Observations 7 

Such an occurrence as happened 
last spring in South CaroHna, the 
murder of a colored postmaster and 
his innocent little daughter while they 
were fleeing from his burning home, 
because he was conducting the post- 
office therein, never could have hap- 
pened in Europe, not even in despised 
Spain, in this year of our Lord. 
Much less such a horrible act as I 
read of in the New Or\e3.ns Pi'caj' 71 ne 
last April, — the burning of a cabin 
and a poor sick negro, because he 
had the smallpox. They know no 
State's Rights doctrine in Europe 
that makes possible such deeds. 

Again, not even the Czar of all the 
Russias dares to do what a witless 
boy speculator in Chicago (Leiter) 



8 Observations 

lately did, to wit, advance the price 
of bread to every workingman in the 
land. Such wild speculation in the 
necessities of life never has been and 
never will be permitted on any Bourse 
in Europe. These are some of the 
advantages of a life in Europe. I 
may in a subsequent letter speak of 
some of the disadvantages, for give 
me America as a home. 



SECOND LETTER 

T^HERE is one thing we Ameri- 
cans, with all our boasting, can 
learn of other nations : the value of 
continued and persistent application 
for generation after generation, by 
father and son, to the same line of 
occupation, enabling them thereby to 
produce results which, with all our 
inventive genius, we are not able 
to equal. 

In the city of St. Etienne, perched 
high up on the mountains in the south 
of France, in little shops no larger 
and no better than an ordinary 

9 



lo Observations 

country blacksmith shop in New Eng- 
land, they produce gun-barrels which 
for temper and strength are far su- 
perior to any that have ever been 
manufactured in America. It is a 
well-known fact that all the best 
sporting guns, presumably made in 
the United States, have imported 
gun-barrels. 

In far-away Norway, with the rud- 
est of tools, they are able to chisel 
and polish stones, and the workman- 
ship cannot be equalled by the finest 
machinery ever set up in any quarry 
in America. 

On the west coast of England they 
have produced for a century and more 
a broadcloth that, with a seventy per 
cent, duty in the United States for 



Observations 1 1 

the last thirty years as an incentive, 
our manufacturers have not been 
able to match ; and English broad- 
cloth is to-day superior to broad- 
cloth made in any other part of the 
world. 

There are no jacks-of-all-trades in 
Europe. A man does only one sim- 
ple thing, does that all his life, and 
teaches his children to follow in his 
footsteps. 

It is one of the claims advanced In 
favor of the superiority of the mas- 
sage treatment at the celebrated 
water-cure, Aix-les-Bains, that the 
mysteries of the profession have been 
handed down from father to son from 
time immemorial. I think there is 
much in the claim. It is certainly 



12 Observations 

the largest and most successful water- 
cure on the globe, and something 
must have given it this success. For 
the cure of rheumatism, gout, and 
kindred diseases, there is no place 
like it probably on either Continent. 
It was known to the Romans, and 
has since been patronized by all 
neighboring civilized people. The 
ruins here of extinct Roman baths 
and other Roman or mediaeval struc- 
tures are very interesting to visit. 

To carry the Illustration a little 
farther : The physician whom I am 
consulting says he speaks from an ex- 
perience of sixty years in the use of 
these waters, he himself having been 
here thirty years, and his predecessor 
thirty years before him. 



Observations 13 

While I am writing on this subject, 
it may be interesting to add, as every 
one knows who has suffered from 
rheumatism, that there has as yet 
been no drug discovered that can 
cure the disease, and that a milHon 
dollars awaits the man who first 
makes the discovery. 

Let me also add that, whether right 
or wrong, and I will not attempt here 
to discuss the question, the treatment 
at Aix-les- Bains varies from that of 
any similar water-cure, or the practice 
of any physician in the United States. 
The patient disrobes, and two at- 
tendants massage you while the hot 
water is being poured over your body 
from a hose. At the end of ten or 
fifteen minutes, you are wrapped in 



14 Observations 

flannel blankets, and two men carry 
you home in a canopied chair resting 
on two bars, and put you to bed, 
where you are expected to remain a 
half-hour. An attendant from your 
hotel or boarding-house carries your 
flannel blankets to the bath-house, 
and brings home your clothes in a 
bag. The sight of these canopied 
chairs in the streets is both amusing 
and singular. They tell you here to 
eat and drink anything you like, 
provided it does not distress you, and 
not to take any medicine, if possible 
to get along without it, but to depend 
upon the massage in connection with 
the natural waters found here in 
such abundance, arguing that medi- 
cine which is good for one part of 



Observations 15 

the body may be bad for another 
part. 

The temperature of the sulphur 
spring is 1 13 degrees, and of the alum 
spring 115 degrees Fahrenheit, show- 
ing it comes from a depth of about 
four thousand feet. 

Apropos, I might add that last 
spring it was my misfortune to be 
taken down in Chicago, on my way 
home from California, with a severe 
attack of sciatica. After a week's 
treatment in a hospital I secured a 
private car and went to Saratoga 
Springs, and, after a month, to Hot 
Springs, Virginia. I consulted or 
employed in the meantime seven 
doctors, and each one condemned 
all that the other doctors had done 



1 6 Observations 

for me, and each told me that I was 
fortunate to be ahve after taking 
the previous doctor's dreadful medi- 
cine. At last I became diso^usted 
with the whole business and said : 
" To the dogs with your drugs ! I 
will try what an ocean trip will do, 
and what the experience of centuries 
at Aix-les-Bains has taucrht mankind 
to be the proper treatment for rheuma- 
tism." I am more than pleased with 
the results. 

These same doctors gave me six 
different diet lists. One said I might 
eat all vegetables that grow above the 
ground but nothing that grows in 
it. The next one said such a doctor 
was a fool ; that death lurked for me 
in the watery cabbage. One doctor 



Observations 17 

said I might eat carrots, and the next 
said if I did my stomach would be- 
come hard and distended Hke a beer 
barrel. Another commanded a diet 
of fish, and the next one scouted the 
idea, saying I might just as well pour 
soapsuds into my stomach. One told 
me to live mainly on soups, and the 
next one when he called found me 
eating soup, and ordered all soups 
taken away from me as if I had been 
eating rank poison. 

So I pasted all six diet lists to- 
gether on one page in my scrap-book, 
and call it my medical crazy quilt, or 
Hippocrates confounded. 



THIRD LETTER 

T^HERE is one thing in which the 
^ people on the Continent have an 
advantage over Americans, and es- 
pecially us New Englanders. They 
know how to extract more happiness 
out of life than we do. Whether 
they will suffer proportionally in the 
next world for whatever advantage 
they have gained in this, I leave to 
theologians to discuss : I simply re- 
cord the fact. 

I think no one who has ever visited 
these countries has failed to observe 
how men, women, and children, the 

iS 



Observations 19 

whole family, seem to enjoy their 
pleasures together, and, as often as 
every week, if not oftener, they ap- 
parently plan for some little outing. 
I am not in favor of work or play on 
Sunday, but if people are happier 
working or playing than being Idle, 
then above all other things I wish to 
see them happy. Thomas Jefferson 
said : " To be happy one must be 
busy." Idleness is the parent of vice. 
People who work or play on Sunday 
have had no intellectual training, and 
work or play is their only recreation, 
and they are simply miserable when 
not working or playing. This ac- 
counts largely for the so-called Con- 
tinental Sabbath. 

The first time I went to Germany, 



20 Observations 

my friends, originally nice New Eng- 
land people, invited me Sunday after- 
noon to accompany them to a fete in 
a neighboring village, and I went. 

Every village of any size on the 
Continent has a fete, lasting ten days 
or more each year, made up of little 
shows, and temporary booths for the 
sale of small wares. 

It is remarkable how quickly even 
the strictest of American Pharisees 
conform themselves to the habits and 
customs of Europe. A good Chris- 
tian woman, a leader in the Sunday- 
school at home, and whose father 
would not start on a journey until 
five minutes after midnight rather 
than travel on Sunday, came to 
Paris, and the very first week was 



Observations 21 

invited, and attended a grand recep- 
tion given by President Carnot at 
the Elysee, where music, dancing, and 
refreshments were the order of the 
day. This lady did only what ninety- 
nine out of every hundred persons 
who come to Europe do, only the 
act may vary in character. While 
these people know nothing of the 
thousand and one comforts that a 
New England home possesses, and 
while they are taxed most unmerci- 
fully to maintain vast standing armies, 
and while their lot is humble and 
arbitrary, with little chance or hope 
of ever rising above it, still they are 
happy. 

Factories in Germany shut down 
half an hour about ten a.m., and 



22 Observations 

again about three p.m., and beer is 
furnished to the help. In the fields, 
men and women work together, and 
their merry laughter as they go back 
and forth from their work makes a 
dyspeptic American envious. None 
are so poor or ignorant that they do 
not know how to dance, and they 
will sit for hours, listening to music 
at street corners, cafes, or parks. 

I heard the late Rev. S. F. Smith, 
author of the world-famous hymn, 
" My Country, 't is of Thee," say that 
about the year 1830 he visited Ger- 
many, and was astonished at the 
singing in the public schools, a thing 
then unknown in America, and after 
his return home he wrote that hymn 
to be sung by school-children. But 



Observations 23 

men and women as well as children 
have been singing it ever since. He 
said he wanted to introduce Into 
New England life some of the inno- 
cent pleasures of the Old World. 

When one goes to Scotland all 
this changes, and you are among a far 
different people. One Sunday I was 
walking in the suburbs of Edinburgh, 
and fell in with a young Scotchman ; 
we walked some miles together. He 
told me it was not considered re- 
spectable to be seen walking or stroll- 
ing about Edinburgh on Sunday, and 
that one Monday morning, a few 
years before, when he went to his ac- 
customed place in the Glasgow Bank, 
one of the governors or managers 
sent for him to come to his private 



24 Observations 

office. He went, and the manager 
asked him if he did not see him stroll- 
ing on Sunday last, and he said, yes, 
he went out for exercise. The man- 
ager replied it did not look well for 
a young man to be seen loitering 
around the streets on the Sabbath 
day. He turned and asked me 
where I supposed that man was 
now ? I told him I supposed in 
Heaven. He replied, " Not yet ; he 
is in jail." 

You will remember the great fail- 
ure of the Glasgow Bank, involving 
several million dollars. It was proven 
that these managers had been rob- 
bing the bank systematically for 
years, and although they were old 
and gray-headed, and some of them 



Observations 25 

of noble families, the English courts, 
as they generally do, proved no re- 
specter of persons, and punished 
them very severely. 

A friend of mine, an American by 
birth, but for a long time a resident 
of London, told me that one summer 
he took a cottage in the Scottish 
Highlands. His wife on Sunday 
played some sacred music on a piano. 
That was something awful for his 
Scotch neighbors, and Monday a dele- 
gation of ladies called to remonstrate 
with his wife against such blasphem- 
ous music on the Lord's Day. In 
parts of Scotland, Presbyterian fu- 
nerals are conducted without any re- 
ligious service at the grave, and 
the singing of a hymn would be the 



26 Observations 

signal for a riot. Every traveler 
knows what a stupid city London 
is on Sunday, and yet it boasts of 
thirty thousand bar-maids, and im- 
morality wears a bolder and more 
unblushing front than in any city, 
Christian or Pagan, on either Hemi- 
sphere so far as I have visited. 

The rulers, or governments, on the 
Continent take advantage of the con- 
tented and happy disposition of their 
subjects, which no Anglo-Saxon peo- 
ple would submit to for a day. 

A gentleman in Hamburg, Ger- 
many, told me that one day he came 
home, and his wife said to him the 
butler had been saucy, that she had 
discharged him, and he went away 
threatening trouble. Sure enough, 



Observations 27 

he went to the poHce station, and re- 
ported that he had overheard this 
gentleman say, while dining at his 
own table, " The Emperor acted like a 
fool in leading an orchestra in pub- 
lic." This orentleman was called to ac- 
count, and punished by confinement in 
his own house for thirty days. Only 
a few years since, it was a crime for 
any man in Germany to wear a red 
neck-tie, or for persons to wear any- 
thing red, as that was the color 
adopted by the Socialists, and its 
wearing was, therefore, condemned 
by the State, no matter whether the 
wearer was or was not in sympathy 
with Socialism, 

When my mother was In Berlin, 
and after she had been there the 



28 Observations 

allotted two weeks, the police officer 
called and wanted to know how long 
she expected to stay, her income, her 
business there, etc., as if a woman 
seventy years old could overthrow 
the German Empire, or endanger the 
life of her Emperor. Many Ameri- 
cans refuse to live in Germany, these 
oft-repeated questions and the con- 
stant surveillance of the police be- 
come so annoying. They do not like 
to live under a Government run, as 
Emperor William says, by " me and 
God." 

How true it is, 

" Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." 



FOURTH LETTER 

A PERSON learns by travelling 
'** that the United States is not all 
the world. It is mortifying to hear 
Englishmen brag that if they had 
agreed to the proposals of the Con- 
tinental powers we would have 
been wiped out on land and sea in 
our war with Spain. Again, to hear 
them brag that they are largely ab- 
sorbing the business of the United 
States, — its railroads, its mines, its 
coal and iron deposits, its breweries 
and wineries, its thread factories, its 
machinery factories, and its wheat- 
fields, and so on. 

29 



30 Observations 

It is too true that they are car- 
rying all our exports and imports 
in their ships ; that the price of 
wheat is largely fixed in London and 
not in Chicago, cotton in Liverpool 
and not in New Orleans, and wool at 
London's annual sales. Over 20,- 
000,000 acres of land in the United 
States are now owned by English cap- 
italists, — a tract of land about as large 
as New Hampshire, Vermont, Massa- 
chusetts, and Connecticut combined. 

Gov. Marshall Jewell once told me 
that he sent his agents through South 
America to sell goods, but found to 
his sorrow that all bills would have 
to be paid through London banking- 
houses, and that consequently it 
would leave him no profits. 



Observations 31 

In speaking of Jewell, I am reminded 
that, when once in Vienna, I heard a 
man relate how he went with Mr. 
Jewell to solicit an order for the belts 
in a new factory being erected near 
the city. Mr. Jewell told the inter- 
preter to tell the man, first, that he 
had been Governor of Connecticut ; 
second, that he had been United 
States Minister to Russia ; third, that 
he had been Postmaster-General in 
Grant's cabinet. The man said some- 
thing in German and the interpreter 
smiled. Jewell asked what the man 
said. " Why, he says he wonders how 
so great a man could come so far to 
solicit his small order." 

But to return to the previous mat- 
ter. When the Englishman gets 



Z2 Observations 

through bragging, I feel like telling 
him that the sun does not shine 
on any so-called civilized land where 
more people die daily of starvation, 
where more rao-cred children, more 
abject poverty, more downright human 
sufferinor exists, than in the land ruled 
by England's Queen. The lust for 
land and wealth has eaten out the 
heart and the humanity of our Anglo- 
Saxon cousins, and they are aptly 
represented by their Queen. I have 
been shocked many and many a time, 
in England, to hear serious English- 
men speak so disparagingly of their 
Queen. It is a common remark : 

" Oh ! you Americans may laud 
our Queen, but she is all for self 
and her family, and scarcely a mite 



Observations 33 

of her immense fortune has she ever 
bestowed to aid one poor bleeding, 
sufferinor soul in all her realm." 

Alas, it is too true, and she compla- 
cently eats, rides, and sleeps, amid 
the most appalling suffering to be 
found in any part of the civilized 
world, as any one can testify who has 
traversed the poorer districts of Lon- 
don, Liverpool, or Manchester, to say 
nothing of the scenes to be witnessed 
in Ireland, India, and in other parts 
of her dominions. 

The population of France is 38,- 
000,000, and has registered paupers, 
290,000. Germany has 52,000,000 
population, and has registered pau- 
pers, 320,000. Italy, poor though it 
be, with a population of 29,000,000, 



34 Observations 

has registered paupers, 270,000, while 
the British Islands, with a popula- 
tion of 37,000,000, have the astound- 
ing number of registered paupers, 
887,000. 

It is these sad sights to be met 
with so frequently, that detract from 
the pleasures of travel in a foreign 
land. You may see in one day more 
wretchedness and poverty than you 
will see in a whole lifetime in our 
blessed New England. 

The Czar of Russia has called a 
council of European nations to see if 
there cannot be a step taken towards 
a general disarmament, knowing full 
well that in fifty or a hundred years 
Europe must be ruined either by 
war or famine ; that this increasing 



Observations 35 

military expenditure cannot go on 
for ever. 

Some day I trust there will also be 
a law to prevent the increase of the 
population by the vicious, the sickly, 
the incompetent, and the penniless, 
for it is a crime which cries to heaven 
for vengeance, that innocent little 
children should be thrust into this 
world under such dreadful circum- 
stances, and born to a life of penury 
and suffering. 

It is one of the anomalies of nature 
that population increases most rapidly 
in famine-infected districts, as is 
shown by recent statistics in India. 

It is all very well for Ella Wheeler 
Wilcox to write sentimental poetry 
on " Babyland and the Stork," but 



3^ Observations 

the stork does n't light more than 
once out of ten times in the right 
place. Society has got to protect it- 
self, or be in the end swamped by 
human vermin. Education or colo- 
nization does n't solve the problem. 
The Lord helps those people and 
nations that help themselves. Self- 
preservation is the first law of na- 
ture alike for the individual and the 
commonwealth. An ounce of pre- 
vention is worth a pound of cure. 

The French population is the only 
one in Europe that remains the same, 
births and deaths being about equal, 
and hence largely their prosperity. 
There is a place for every child that 
is born, but even here the births are 
in too large a proportion among the 



Observations zi 

low and irresponsible element of 
society. 

Perhaps, however, I take a wrong 
view, and perhaps it is better to steel 
your heart against all the suffering you 
see in your travels in Europe, and 
charge it up to the Almighty. Some 
people have charged enough misery 
in the last six thousand years to the 
account of the Almighty to make the 
stones in the streets shed tears, 
and they would still add to the 
account. 

It is not the men and women for 
whom my heart bleeds, but it is for 
the poor, half-starved, ragged, sad- 
visaged children that thwart your 
path in every city in Europe. I 
would orive them dollars where I 

<3 



38 Observations 

would give pennies to those brutal, 
worthless outlaws, our Cuban allies. 

In contrast to Queen Victoria 
there is one ruler in Europe who 
has devoted his whole life conscien- 
tiously to the welfare of his people, 
and is revered by all : Emperor Fran- 
cis Joseph of Austria, the most simple 
and unpretentious ruler in the world 
(yet the lot of the laborer is lament- 
able). I saw him at his palace at 
Ischl, a plain, ordinary chateau, and 
driving unattended in not so good an 
equipage as many a Connecticut man 
boasts. Every year twelve paupers 
are selected from the public poor- 
houses in Vienna, and are taken to a 
church where this same gray-haired, 
venerable Emperor, in accordance 



Observations 39 

with a very ancient custom, washes 
their feet. But it is said that their 
feet are already scrupulously clean, as 
these men have been preparing a 
year for the rite. It is a ceremony 
which, once seen, however, is never to 
be forgotten. 



- FIFTH LETTER 

f CANNOT help noticing the mar- 
* vellous changes that have taken 
place in the twenty years since I first 
visited Europe. Cities like London, 
Paris, Berlin, and Vienna have shown 
the same development and progress as 
our own New England cities. It will 
not do to think that all the world 
stands still, and only America pro- 
gresses. 

France has risen Phoenix-like from 
her ashes, and has made as much pro- 
gress in the last twenty-five years, if 

not more, than any nation on the 
40 



Observations 41 

globe. These twenty-five years and 
little more, since the Franco-Prussian 
war, she would not exchange for any 
previous one hundred years in her 
history. 

Emperor William knows to-day 
that she is a foe worthy of his steel. 
Never was she so ably led, so strongly 
armed, so honestly governed, thanks 
to Bismarck and Von Moltke, w^ho 
drove the worthless Napoleon III. 
from the throne, and put the Govern- 
ment In the hands of the people, and 
thereby established a Republic which 
is proving a warning and a lesson to 
the monarchical governments of Eu- 
rope. The training of centuries 
has taught the French people the 
fundamental principles of national 



42 Observations 

prosperity and growth, to wit : in- 
dustry and economy. 

I well remember one day standing 
on the rue de Rivoli in Paris and see- 
ing a long line of peasants, men and 
women, in their blue blouses, with 
their lunch baskets. I asked what It 
all meant, and was told that the next 
day at 9 a.m. the new Government 
Loan was open for application, and 
these people would stand there in line 
all night to be on hand at the open- 
ing. A sight I venture you can see 
in no other country. The peasantry 
of France are more contented and 
prosperous than the peasantry of 
America, England, Germany, or 
any other nation, and that is the 
reason they seldom emigrate. The 



Observations 43 

prosperity of the farmer is the only 
real substantial basis of the prosper- 
ity of any people. In France there 
are only 8 paupers to looo popula- 
tion, while in Ireland 23, in Scotland 
24, and in England 28. 

Napoleon I. will be commended 
in history as long as civilization lasts 
for two thinofs : first, the establish- 
ment of the Code Napoleon, reduc- 
ing to elementary principles the laws 
controlling the life and property of 
French subjects ; and, secondly, the 
annihilation of great landed estates, 
and the distribution of the land 
among the common people. 

One half of the population of 
France is enraged in ao^riculture. 
The ninety million acres under cul- 



44 Observations 

tivation are divided amone five and 
a half millions of proprietors, most of 
whom own less than six acres. At 
the close of the Franco-Prussian war 
Germany exacted a subsidy or penalty 
of $200,000,000, and the German 
army was, by the treaty, to garrison 
France until that sum was paid with 
interest. Bismarck calculated that it 
would take from twenty to thirty 
years for France to recover from the 
ravages of the war and to pay off 
this debt. It has always been urged 
that Bismarck was outwitted by 
Favre, the French representative who 
negotiated the treaty, as he imposed 
upon Bismarck as to the magnitude of 
the indemnity by claiming that it 
would take a train of eighty freight 



Observations 45 

cars, packed solid with gold, to trans- 
port the two hundred million dollars' 
indemnity from Paris to Berlin, or 
a train of drays more than half a 
mile long. But the very first year 
after the war the French Govern- 
ment called for a loan of two hun- 
dred million dollars to pay off this 
debt, and the peasantry of France 
went down into their old blue stock- 
ings, and subscribed the amount thirty 
times over, much to the chagrin of 
Bismarck, and the German army had 
to be withdrawn. 

In Germany it is entirely different, 
for Germany, with all her progress, is 
wretchedly poor. Out of every looo 
men 920 have less than $225 income 
a year, and out of this $225 they 



46 Observations 

must support their families. That Is 
a picture of poverty literally appalling. 
Only 20 men out of every 10,000 have 
an income of more than $2375 a 
year, and 29,000,000 out of 32,000,000 
live on an income of less than 62 
cents a day. No wonder they emi- 
grate. No wonder they are socialists. 
No wonder Emperor William trem- 
bles for his throne. 

All the governments of Continental 
Europe have exhaused nearly every 
known means of raising taxes. I 
have not time to begin to enumerate 
the most odious. One day I was go- 
ing to Germany and I had in the car 
four oranges. They made me pay 
duty on them. A friend of mine 
brought a cake from Paris to give to 



Observations 47 

his sister, who was at school in Ger- 
many, and they made him pay duty 
on it. In Germany you must pay an 
income tax if your income exceeds 
$255 a year. 

At the entrance of every city in 
France there are officers who exact 
duties (they are called octroi duties) 
for everything brought into the city 
by the farmer, the butcher, the milk- 
man, etc. If you hire an apartment 
in France by the year, besides the 
rent to the landlord you must pay 
taxes to the Government for the front 
windows, and also. for the balcony if 
there is one. 

At many of the watering-places in 
Europe, if you stay two weeks you 
must pay a tax to the local authorities. 



4^ Observations 

At Carlsbad the tax is equivalent to 
$3, and as over 50,000 people visit 
that place every summer, this tax is a 
great source of revenue. 

In Spanish countries a farmer can- 
not slaughter his own animals, like 
sheep or swine, until he has first paid 
the tax, and again can sell nothing off 
his farm until he pays for a license. 
It would seem as if the devil himself 
had had a hand in crrindinof the toil- 
ing masses of Europe. 

No leading power in Europe will 
commence a serious war in our life- 
time, for the want of funds. They 
are all on the defensive. A distin- 
guished author has lately argued 
that the next great naval war will 
turn on the supply of coal ; that 



Observations 49 

every man-o'-war would soon ex- 
haust its supply, and that if all neu- 
tral ports were closed no coal could 
be obtained when outside their own 
ports. Coaling stations in distant 
parts of the world would soon be 
exhausted or destroyed. This writer 
claims that a combination of miners 
at a critical period, and a refusal to 
mine more coal, would paralyze any 
nation, as it takes three years' train- 
ing to make a successful miner. The 
Franco-Prussian war lasted only six 
months, and cost France in money, 
in one way and another, according to 
the best authorities, $1,800,000,000. 
War to-day is a question of money, a 
battle of dollars, and no nation cares 
to take the risk of bankrupting itself 



50 Observations 

by engaging in a war with its 
equal. 

They are all like the big bully who 
kicks a poor lame, friendless boot- 
black, but doffs his hat to a police- 
man as if he were a king. 

They will all shoot for amusement 
each year a few hatless, shoeless, 
homeless savages in Africa, or Asia, 
but they want no war near at home. 

A prominent clergyman of the 
Established Church only recently 
said : " I am sorry for the thousands 
whom England lets die every year of 
preventable diseases, because we are 
too busy or too comfortable to save 
their lives ; comforting ourselves with 
the thought that we did not make the 
world and are not responsible for it." 



SIXTH LETTER 

/^^N my first trip to Europe, years 
^-^^ ago, I commenced my travels, 
as do most people, by visiting the 
ruins in England and Scotland, of 
which all Englishmen are so proud, 
and about which they never tire of 
talking. 

These ruins date back from three 
to six hundred years, to about the 
time America was settled. I admired 
them, and justly, for our ancestors 
built them, and it is about all that 
is left to tell us that we ever had any 
English ancestors. 
51 



52 Observations 

It was hard for me to get as en- 
thusiastic over these EngHsh ruins as 
many people do. You have only to 
go back eighteen or twenty genera- 
tions, a mere speck on the dial of 
time, to find that the ancestors of 
these same Englishmen were nearly 
unclad savages, roaming through the 
forests of Northern and Central 
Europe, and indulging in cruelties 
that make a North American Indian 
appear respectable. The word An- 
glo-Saxon is derived from the names 
of two heathen nations. Angles and 
Saxons, who invaded England about 
A.D. 450, drove out the Christians, 
and have ever since remained the 
dominant race in the British Isles. 

One day I visited the Castle at 



Observations 53 

Nuremberg, that quaint and most 
interesting old city in Germany, and 
looked at the laree collection of in- 
struments of torture, and lost in one 
hour all my respect and adoration 
for the ancestors of my English 
ancestors. 

After all, the world is mostly inter- 
ested in what manner of a man you 
are, and not so much whether your 
ancestor three or four generations 
back was a fifer in the Continental 
army, or an orderly and groomed 
George Washington's horse ; or 
whether, twenty generations back, 
they herded with wild animals in the 
jungles of Central Europe ; or whether, 
sixty generations back, they were at 
the sacking of Rome, and helped 



54 Observations 

with fiendish glee in, the destruction 
of beautiful statues, paintings, libra- 
ries, and every vestige of a marked 
civilization. 

Once, in the British Parliament, 
when some one twitted Disraeli of 
being a Jew, and that his ancestors 
murdered the Saviour of mankind, he 
replied: "It may be true that my 
ancestors hung Christ to the cross, 
but at that time your English an- 
cestors were prowling through Cen- 
tral Europe, clad in skins, and living 
in trees or caves, subsisting on roots 
and berries, and chattering in an 
unlettered and an unintelligible gib- 
berish." 

When I crossed to the Continent I 
began to see older ruins, and the Eng- 



Observations 55 

lish ruins crrew tame and uninterestinor. 
When I saw a building a thousand 
years old, I began to realize the 
dimness of history ; how the history of 
mankind fades back into a fathomless 
darkness, which no man is able to com- 
prehend or explain, and about which 
he can only speculate or conjecture. 

It is almost beyond belief, but 
nevertheless true, that Italy derives 
more income yearly from her world- 
famous ruins than from all her agri- 
cultural and manufacturing industries 
combined. Even in ordinary years, 
foreign sightseers spend over 300,- 
000,000 francs in Italy. 

As I went farther East the ruins 
became older and more venerable, 
until I stood, at Athens and Rome, 



56 Observations 

amid ruins that have survived the 
rack of twenty centuries, ruins that 
were old when Christ was born. 

As I stood there I thought, what do 
we owe, if anything, to these nations 
that have perished, and now hve only 
in history, and in these mute but 
mighty ruins. We think we owe them 
nothing. On the other hand, no man 
can measure what we owe to these by- 
gone nations in the development of 
a spoken and written language, in art, 
science, philosophy, jurisprudence, 
and in literature and learning. Every 
sentiment in the Declaration of In- 
dependence, and every principle of 
liberty enunciated in our Constitution, 
was taught by the Athenians, who 
did more for human liberty than 



Observations 57 

any other people, past or present. A 
renowned writer, one of the greatest 
of modern literary artists, has said : 
** All the triumphs of truth and genius 
over prejudice and power, in every 
country and in every age, have been 
the triumphs of Athens." No man 
has yet appeared, endowed with 
learning so vast, with patience so 
inexhaustible, and with time and 
talents so illimitable as to be able to 
enumerate or epitomize all that is 
valuable, which has been transmitted 
to us from these dead and obliterated 
nations. 

As I wandered through the British 
Museum, and that other wonderful 
museum of Roman and Grecian 
antiquities at Naples, I got a glimpse 



58 Observations 

of a civilization that paralleled, and 
in some respects excelled, our own. 
I have not the time to enumerate the 
large number of articles I saw in 
those museums which we have now 
in daily use — so many things we 
think are modern. A Connecticut 
manufacturer has grown rich by pat- 
enting and manufacturing safety pins. 
I saw exactly the same things that 
were taken from the ruins of Pom- 
peii and are now exhibited in the 
museum at Naples. Perhaps the 
sports of the ancients were sometimes 
cruel and their conduct brutal, but not 
more so than when three years ago 
in a prosperous city in America, five 
thousand people gathered at midday 
in a public square and shouted with 



Observations 59 

fiendish Mee as a neo^ro was beino; 
tortured and burnt to death. 

In readingf an account of Cicero 
and his contemporaries, I marvelled 
to learn that the wealthy Romans 
lived in a sumptuousness of style 
not yet equalled by a Vanderbilt or a 
Rockefeller. Modern civilization has 
produced no brighter or more endur- 
ing names than Cicero, Demosthenes, 
Plato, Aristotle, Lycurgus, and Paul. 
As yet we know but little of what 
might be known of those ancient 
people. 

I was talking with an English 
traveler who assisted in unearthing 
from the sands of an Egyptian plain, 
two or three years ago, some of the 
lost sayings of the Saviour. He said 



6o Observations 

that they were digging in what was 
evidently the suburbs of some ancient 
city, among the rubbish that had been 
dumped outside the walls, and said 
they had recovered enough manu- 
script [papyrus] to occupy them for 
twenty years in deciphering and 
translating them, so slow is the work. 
r It is to be wondered whether when, 
twenty centuries hence, some man 
delves among the sweepings of aban- 
doned and desolated London, he will 
find as much to interest him, or to 
commend its former inhabitants, as 
this Englishman found in the sterile 
plains of Egypt. It is hard to draw 
a fine line of distinction between our 
English and our Roman ancestors. 
They both marched, exultant and 



Observations 6i 

triumphant, over the weak and 
scattered tribes of foreign lands, 
and carried, one to Rome, and the 
other to London, the spoils of their 
diabolical raids. Rome plunged. In 
a few years, from the Augustan age, 
the crowning epoch in her history, to 
her fall, bowed beneath treachery 
at home and savage enemies from 
abroad. 

The recent action of the French 
In Africa, where It Is proven that they 
mutilated their captive negroes, cut- 
tlnof off hands, ears, and dolnof most 
horrible deeds of cruelty to the poor, 
defenceless, and Ignorant natives, is 
equally open to condemnation. 

The history of England In India 
and In Central Africa Is but a counter- 



62 Observations 

part of Roman history, and you can 
put one name in the place of the 
other, and do no injustice to either, i 

Lately I was reading a letter from 
a prominent Englishman in which 
he stated that no member of the 
English Government dared to explain 
or defend, in Parliament, the conduct 
of the British soldiers in the recent 
war in the Soudan. They gave no 
quarter, took no prisoners, but tor- 
tured and killed men, women, and 
children alike. 

Enough for the present of our new 
allies, the English. 

An English poet has well written : 

" Ye friends to truth, ye statesmen who survey 
The rich man's joys increase, the poor's decay, 
'T is yours to judge, how wide the limits stand 
Between a splendid and a happy land." 



SEVENTH LETTER 

A MID all the poverty and wretched- 
■^ ness of these European nations, 
you are bewildered and lost at the 
wealth of the churches. Altars, and 
statues of the various saints, are 
strewn with jewels, beset with dia- 
monds, and covered with jewelry cast 
there by repentant and distracted 
mortals. Behind the altars is wood- 
work, inlaid with gold and silver, while 
the doorways of these same churches 
are crowded with sad-visaged, miser- 
able beggars, men, women and 
children. I could not help thinking, 
63 



64 Observations 

why not use some of this immense 
idle wealth to feed the hungry, and 
clothe the naked ? 

Churches and religious institutions 
are endowed with lands, and vast 
property possessions, some of it won 
by wars and confiscations in remote 
ages. It is said that the Greek 
Church, the National Church of 
Russia, is so rich that it alone could 
pay the debt of Russia, amounting to 
the fabulous sum of over $4,000,000,- 
000. The tomb of Mahomet is cov- 
ered with jewels worth, it is esti- 
mated, $10,000,000. 

The Archbishop of Canterbury is in 
receipt of a salary of $60,000 a year. 
The Archbishop of Austria has a 
salary of $150,000, and the Pope 



Observations 65 

an income variously estimated from 
$1,000,000 to $2,000,000 a year. 
Bishops and Cardinals live in a style 
and splendor that make a New Eng- 
lander look aghast, and a Vanderbilt 
almost envious. They do all this in 
the service of the meek and lowly 
Saviour, who himself penniless, having 
not where to lay his head, sent forth 
his apostles with this momentous 
charge : " Go your ways : behold I 
send you forth as lambs among 
wolves. Carry neither purse, nor 
scrip, nor shoes." 

Canon Farrar, perhaps the most 
brilliant orator, and the most learned 
preacher in the Episcopal Church of 
England to-day, says : 

** Nowhere can you find, among 



66 Observations 

professing Christians, a more narrow- 
minded, bigoted, and resentful set of 
men than among the Clergy of the 
Established Church of England," and 
he calls some church papers " a reptil- 
ian press." The persecution of Dean 
Stanley, and Bishop Colenso bears 
testimony to the truth of his words. 

The mass of the Protestant and 
Catholic Clergy of the United States 
are so far superior to the Protestant 
and Catholic Clergy of Europe, In 
learning, in worthiness, and in all the 
Christian graces, that no traveler can 
fail to recognize the value of the 
free Institutions of America, even in 
religious matters. 

Thank God for America, the only 
nation on which the circling sun shines, 



Observations 67 

where the Church and the State are 
separate ! 

Jefferson wrote from Paris in 1786, 
when his act for the freedom of reh- 
gion, as passed in Virginia, was be- 
ing printed and spread broadcast 
throughout Europe : 

" I think our act for Freedom of 
Rehgion will produce considerable 
good, even in these countries, where 
ignorance, superstition, poverty, and 
oppression of body and mind in every 
form, are so firmly settled on the mass 
of the people, that their redemption 
from them can never be hoped." 

There are to-day existing over one 
thousand distinct relig^ious creeds, 
and I fear, as a most profound 
American jurist has lately well said, 



68 Observations 

" We are no nearer a universal religion 
than were our ancestors two thou- 
sand or five thousand years ago." 

Five rulers in Europe wrench from 
the tax-payers, and spend In riotous 
living, enough annually to pay for all 
the public schools, all the poor-houses, 
all the Insane, and the deaf and dumb 
asylums. In New England, with Its 
five million Inhabitants. These five 
persons claim the right to do this 
under the sham pretence of the divine 
right of kings to rule and rob the 
people. Our forefathers exploded 
this humbug over a hundred years 
ago, but it still holds its Iron heel on 
the down-trodden masses of Europe, 
except In one or two small countries. 

I think there Is nothing finer in the 



Observations 69 

English language than the words of 
that most gifted son of the South, 
Henry W. Grady : 

"I love this Union because I am 
an American citizen. I love it be- 
cause it stands in the light while other 
nations are groping in the dark. I 
love it because here, in this republic 
of a homogeneous people, must be 
worked out the great problems that 
perplex the world and established 
the axioms that must uplift and re- 
generate humanity. I love it because 
I know that its flag, followed by a 
devoted people once estranged and 
thereby closer bound, shall blaze out 
the way and make clear the path up 
which all the nations of the earth 
shall come in God's appointed time." 



EIGHTH LETTER 

/^N my way home, I am looking 
^^ back and thinking what are the 
most marked characteristics of the 
land I have left behind me in compar- 
ison with the land to which I am 
bound. I put first its military organ- 
ization, which compels every man to 
serve at least two years in the army, 
leaving home, friends, and occupa- 
tion, for a two years' service in what 
to me, and to most men, seems to 
be only a prison life. A reputable 
German told me only recently that 

unless you had supplies of food 
70 



Observations 71 

furnished you from outside, but few 
constitutions could endure the two 
years without injury. It is not sur- 
prising, then, that Germans emigrate, 
and abandon home and friends, to 
avoid this horrid conscription. 

It is notorious that the German of- 
ficers treat the privates as Httle better 
than animals, and often not as well. 
Not long since a man in the German 
cavalry applied to his officer for an- 
other horse, saying he was unable to 
control the animal. The officer told 
him he " must control it," and refused 
the man's appeal. In two days the 
horse ran away and the man was 
killed. Another man was assigned 
to ride the same horse, and In three 
months more the horse again ran 



72 Observations 

away and killed him. The horse 
was still retained, for it is a saying in 
the German army that a horse costs 
money, but a man represents only a 
piece of paper, meaning a conscription. 
A man who had served two years 
in the German cavalry told me that 
he had often seen men returning 
from cavalry practice with blood 
streaming from their boot-legs, so 
badly were they chafed by the hard 
riding exercises through which they 
were put, and when they complained 
to their officers they only got the 
cold answer that they must continue 
every day the same practice until 
they became hardened to the saddle, 
and a wooden saddle at that. Several 
doctors have recently been arrested 



Observations 72> 

in Germany for administering pills 
to conscripts which induced cardiac 
symptoms, thus escaping military ser- 
vice. It seems that one young man 
died from an over-dose, and this led 
to the discovery that some doctors 
had carried on a lucrative practice in 
this line for a long time past. 

I have not time to enumerate the 
awful military expenses that are eat- 
ing out the vitals of Europe, and 
slowly but surely digging Its financial 
grave, taking from honest industry 
the fruits of its toll, and grinding Into 
abject poverty the tolling masses of 
Europe. In the six years ending in 
1888 no less a sum than $5,800,000,- 
000 was spent in France, Germany, 
Austria- Hungary, Great Britain, 



74 Observations 

Russia, Spain, and Italy for military 
and naval purposes alone. In the 
last twenty-five years France has 
spent $5,000,000,000 to reconstruct 
its army. 

Every country in Europe is bridled 
and saddled by a horrid conscripted 
army, except England, and many of 
her leadinof statesmen are advocating- 
to-day a conscripted army for Eng- 
land as an absolute necessity, if she 
is to maintain her place among the 
powers of the world. The war with 
the little Boer Republic in Central 
Africa is teaching England the posi- 
tive necessity of her maintaining a 
vast standing army, in case of diffi- 
culty nearer at home and to protect 
her widely scattered possessions. She 



Observations 75 

has sent almost her last soldier to 
Africa, about 80,000, an army which 
in an European conflict would be ab- 
solutely ridiculous. 

Of course, we must finally come to 
the same evil in the United States, if 
we are to delve in the politics of 
Europe and Asia, and carry out the 
Imperial policy of some of our jingo 
statesmen. I can only echo, and re- 
echo, the words of the brightest or- 
nament of the American Episcopal 
Church, Bishop Potter : " It is an 
unanswerable indictment of the enor- 
mous folly and essential madness of 
the international race for increased 
armaments — ships, and forts, and 
men, piled up in ever-greatening pro- 
portions, until at last the utmost limit 



76 Observations 

of a nation's resources in men and 
money has been reached ; the last man 
has been dragged from his family ; the 
last shekel has been borrowed from 
reluctant creditors, and the empire of 
the republic makes its wild plunge at 
length into irredeemable bankruptcy." 
Another marked characteristic of 
the countries which I am leavino- be- 
hind me in comparison to the United 
States, to which I am returning, is 
the religious intolerance of the one, 
and the religious toleration of the 
other. In Spain, by the constitution 
of 1876, a restricted liberty of wor- 
ship is allowed to Protestants, but it 
has to be entirely in private, all pub- 
lic announcement of the same being 
strictly forbidden. The Clergy in 



Observations "i^ 

most European countries is main- 
tained by the State. Much the same 
intoleration, strange as It may seem 
at the close of the nineteenth, and 
so near the dawn of the twentieth 
century, prevails in many of the 
countries of Europe ; marked as the 
nineteenth century has been by 
such marvellous progress in art, in 
science, in knowledge, and in all 
that ministers to the comfort of 
the human race. 

At the last general election in 
England, Gladstone led the Liberal 
forces in that memorable contest, in 
which he used this grand appeal. 
Nothing finer has been uttered by 
man since the memorable sermon of 
Paul on Mars Hill. With the burden 



78 Observations 

of eighty-three years on his shoulders, 
with a hostile House of Lords, a 
hostile aristocracy, hostile univers- 
ities, and a hostile Queen, he stood 
up before ten thousand of his con- 
stituents in Edinburgh, and threw 
down this bold challenge, saying : 

" I am not going to discuss details 
with you. I represent the youth 
and hope of England, and her 
advancement along ideal paths. The 
solution of these questions of the 
future belongs by right to us, who 
are of the future, and not to you, 
who are of the past." 

And this great Liberal party, 
under the leadership of this master- 
genius of the age, went down In over- 
whelming defeat in 1895, because of 



Observations 79 

the union of the Clergy and the rum- 
seller, and not on account of the Irish 
question. The Clergy, because the 
Liberal party proposed to disestablish 
the Church, or in other words, to put 
an end to the public tithes whereby 
all denominations are obliged to help 
support the Episcopal Church, and 
to put every church upon the same 
equality. The rumsellers joined with 
the Episcopal Clergymen to down the 
greatest statesman this century has 
produced, because it was one of the 
planks of the Liberal party that 
every community should have the 
right of local option, so popular in 
America, and this accounts for the 
immense Tory majority in Parlia- 
ment to-day, and this same Tory 



8o Observations 

party pretends now to be so friendly 
to America and to American inter- 
ests. Heaven save us from such 
friends ! 



NINTH LETTER 

nPR AVE LING has Its pleasures 
'^ and its discomforts. I often 
think its greatest pleasures come 
afterwards, when you are back in 
your old home, or following your old 
vocations. At the immediate time 
you are annoyed by the trials and 
tiresomeness of the trip, but after- 
wards these all vanish, and you think 
of only the pleasant things. I well 
remember returning on a bleak day 
in December from my first trip to 
Europe, and as I stood on the deck 
of the steamer, coming up New York 

81 



82 Observations 

harbor, I remarked to a fellow-pas- 
senger that I had had enough of 
ocean traveling and would never 
cross again. He laughed and said, 
" That is like what all people say who 
have one child, but they soon forget, 
and others follow ; so it will be with 
you," And so it was. 

People should travel, if possible, 
before they have passed middle life. 
It is a great mistake to put off trav- 
eling until you are old and sick, and 
can do nothing else. You need to be 
well and strong and at your best to en- 
dure the hardships and to enter with 
zeal into the pleasures of traveling. 
And then again, the memories are with 
you to comfort you, and to broaden 
your ideas for all your subsequent life. 



Observations 8^ 

Different people find different 
things to enjoy in visiting a new and 
strange country. Some gaze with 
wonder and go into ecstasy over 
an old castle or cathedral ; some 
rave over the art galleries ; some 
prowl around in old and obscure 
quarters full of filth and dirt, with 
their pants or petticoats knee high, 
and wonder you have not been there ; 
some climb mountains or grope in 
caves and mines full of hair-breadth 
escapes ; some seek out all the places 
where vice and wretchedness abide, 
and chew it all their life long after as 
a sweet morsel. 

I met a gentleman, a leading citi- 
zen of Cincinnati, who was on his 
way home from Japan, and he told 



84 Observations 

me he was ashamed to be known as an 
American in Yokohama. The hotel 
was full of American men and women. 
Women of the highest respecta- 
bility at home would organize little 
parties by themselves, and take a 
guide and go where even men blush 
to be seen, the sights are so low and 
disgusting. It is strange how the 
animal sticks out as soon as we go 
away from the restraints of home, 
and Church, and society. 

For my part the greatest pleasure 
I have experienced in all my wander- 
ings throug-h foreio^n lands is to have 

o o o 

heard Gladstone in the British Par- 
liament, Gambetta in the French 
Chamber of Deputies, and Crispi in 
the Italian Parliament at Rome ; in 



Observations 85 

having heard Spurgeon and Dean 
Farrar in their pulpits ; in having 
been present at the wedding of the 
present Queen of Spain, and wit- 
nessed the accompanying pageant, as 
no Court in Europe can boast of such 
gorgeous equipages ; in having trod 
the Appian Way, over which the 
thundering armies of Rome for so 
many centuries marched to and fro 
with the spoils of captive nations ; in 
having stood within the Colosseum's 
walls, which even in their ruins attest 
the mightiness of an Empire that 
once ruled the world, and is to-day 
no more ; in havinsf wandered alone 
the sad, deserted streets of Pompeii, 
which but as yesterday in the cycle 
of the ages were instinct with life. 



86 Observations 

and attesting in their deserted loneli- 
ness too truly the destiny that awaits 
all men and all nations alike. 

Unless all history is a lie, a few- 
centuries hence, men will wander 
among the ruins of the Capitol at 
Washington, and compare its insig- 
nificant ruins with the marvellous 
ruins of Balboa, Luxor, and Athens, 
at which the civilization of the nine- 
teenth century looks aghast, un- 
able to understand how finite man 
ever constructed such magnificent 
works. A traveler, who had visited 
Balboa some twelve times, told me 
there were stones used in the temples 
which no livino- man knows how it 

o 

was possible to quarry, remove, or 
elevate to their present positions, 



Observations Sy 

and as for the cement, and the colors 
in the buildings, modern architects 
can neither equal nor comprehend. 

And then, finally, as the sum of all 
my pleasures, I must count a trip up 
the steep acclivities of Mount Vesu- 
vius, carried by four Italians, plung- 
ing knee deep most of the way in the 
loose ashes, until finally I stood on 
the very brink of the crater, and 
looked down into that seething cauld- 
ron that has been crackling and 
smoking certainly from the com- 
mencement of recorded time, and 
probably for ages before. As you 
gaze, the mysteries that envelop the 
world deepen and darken around you, 
and the puniness of man and the 
mightiness of nature appall you. 



88 Observations 

Walking along the streets of a 
New England city, you cannot realize 
that there was a time when there was 
no New England, or that there will 
ever be a time when New Engfland 
will be no more. But traveling 
makes a man humble, realizing how 
small a part he, or his town, or his 
city, or his State, or his nation, is 
playing in the grand scheme of the 
universe which knows no beginning, 
and no ending. 

Astronomers tell us that the sun is 
the centre of a vast system of worlds, 
and beyond this system, at a distance 
which defies all power of calculation, 
are the fixed stars, each of which 
stars is supposed to be the centre of 
another system of worlds. The body 



Observations 89 

upon which we Hve has been described 
as " less in proportion than the small- 
est grain of sand to the world, or the 
finest particle of dew to the whole 
ocean." How small, how insignifi- 
cant, then, the part which man plays 
in the grand march of the universe ! 



TENTH LETTER 

A FTER an absence of three or 

■** four months in the United 

States, I am once more back in 

France, February, 1899, pleasantly 

located in Le Vesinet, a beautiful 

suburb of Paris, twelve miles out. 

I read in the Paris New York 

Herald to-day of the terrible blizzard 

you are having in the United States, 

and can hardly realize that it is true, 

as the paper states, for I am writing 

to you by an open window, and 

pansies, violets, and daisies are in full 

bloom beneath. 

90 



Observations 91 

The fields are all as green as in 
June with us, and farmers are every- 
where busy cultivating their lands. 
Not in four years have they had ice 
enouorh to make skatinof. 

This is a country where nothing 
seems to be lost or thrown away. 
To Illustrate in a single instance the 
economy of the people, your telegram 
comes to you on a small sheet of 
paper, so folded as to make an enve- 
lope, and thereby saving the expense 
of one, in much the same manner as 
our ancestors folded their letters a 
hundred years ago. There is a 
great market in Paris where second- 
hand food, gathered from hotels and 
restaurants, and second-hand cloth- 
ing, is sold. They eat the crops. 



92 Observations 

gills, and even the combs of fowls ; 
the feet and legfs of a duck make a 
fine soup ; lights of animals, snails — 
all are made to minister to man's 
sustenance. In fact, you soon learn 
that " ignorance is bliss," and that it 
is better, half the time, not to know 
what you are eating. 

But if you once get a good view 
of a French or German kitchen, 
you will marvel at its cleanliness 
and attractiveness. Lonof lines of 
copper kettles, so bright you can see 
your face in them, all hung in their 
proper places, and everything about 
the kitchen is so tidy you only wish 
you could transplant it to New Eng- 
land as a model for New England 
housekeepers. A person would be 



Observations 93 

prepared, and almost persuaded, to 
eat anything that came out of these 
kitchens — rooster combs, horse meat, 
or anything else they might set be- 
fore you. But absolute cleanliness 
is a necessity, for if these copper ket- 
tles are not properly cleansed severe 
illness may be caused. 

As wood and coal are very dear, 
they tie up the little branches of trees 
in small bunches and call them fagots. 
Every one buys them to start the fire, 
or perhaps it may be all the fire they 
ever have. Men and women go 
bareheaded here the year round. 
They only follow, in this, the custom 
of the ancient Romans, as Julius 
Caesar and the Saviour of mankind 
are said never to have owned or worn 



94 Observations 

a hat of any kind. I asked one man 
why he never wore a hat, and he re- 
phed : " It makes my head ache." A 
very good reason, I thought, for go- 
ing without one. 

The working; men all look so com- 
ical in the fields, and in the streets, 
with their long blue shirts, which they 
wear outside of their clothes instead 
of next to their skin as we do in 
America. Big boys, nine, ten, and 
twelve years old, all wear a long 
black apron at school, or at play. 
What a hullabaloo it would make if 
the boys in America were obliged to 
do the same ! 

No woman will work in your 
kitchen unless you furnish her with 
a bottle of wine a day, and she must 



Observations 95 

also have five per cent, commission 
on everything that is bought for the 
table. Men pay four or five dollars, 
in our money, a day for the privilege 
of working: in the leadingf restaurants, 
and furnish all the matches, news- 
papers, sand for the floor, and keep 
the place clean. They get their pay 
out of the tips from customers. 

The cab system of Paris is a mar- 
vellous thing by itself. There are 
about 15,000 cabs, which would reach, 
one after the other in a continuous 
line, over a distance of thirty-five 
miles, nearly from Hartford to New 
Haven. These are rented to the 
drivers, who must pay daily, in ad- 
vance, some four and some five 
dollars, in our money, according to 



gS Observations 

the quality of the team. If the driver 
makes more it is his : if he makes less 
he must lose the difference. 

Not a horse in all France has calks 
on its shoes, and to see them drawing 
the heaviest of loads up the steepest 
and most slippery of roads seems not 
only astounding, but, from an Amer- 
ican standpoint, cruel. 

If a cabman runs over you, and 
thereby damages his horse or carriage 
you must pay for the damage. You 
cross the street or walk in the traveled 
road at your own peril. You have 
no business there, no more than the 
cabman has on the sidewalk. Such 
is the law in Europe. 



ELEVENTH LETTER 

A A 7"E have just witnessed in France 
^ ^ a series of events to be seen 
nowhere else, and without a parallel 
in modern history : the death of the 
President of the French Republic, the 
peaceable and inexpensive election 
of a successor within three days, and 
his quiet, unostentatious entrance into 
office. He arrived at the Elysee Pal- 
ace (the White Flouse of France) late 
one afternoon, accompanied only by 
his son and a few officers ; he pro- 
ceeded at once to his private office, 
and commenced the routine of his 

97 



98 Observations 

official duties. How different from 
all the flum-drum of a Presiden- 
tial election in the United States, 
demoralizinof alike to business and 
public morals, and generally turning 
on the size of the bank account of 
the respective National Committees ! 
One other grreat event attracts the 
attention of the whole civilized world : 
the sickness of the Pope, not merely 
the head of the greatest religious or- 
ganization in existence, but the great- 
est politician in Europe. Around 
the sick-chamber gather the discord- 
ant elements, ready to burst into 
bitter feuds, which his master hand 
has so long averted, between the 
progressive and reactionary elements, 
in other words, between the Catholics 



Observations 99 

of England and America, and Conti- 
nental Catholicism. Progressive, or 
American Catholicism stands for 
temperance, love of country, a quiet, 
orderly Sabbath, and a respectful 
consideration for the opinions and 
rights of all other Christian denomin- 
ations, and a harmonious co-operation 
with them in all humanitarian work. 
Continental Catholicism stands for 
bigotry, for selfishness, for conceding 
nothing in courtesy to opponents, 
ever excluding all other denomina- 
tions from enjoying the same civil 
rights and privileges as themselves, 
and consists mostly in reviling their 
opponents as being infected with In- 
gersollism, with indifference to many 
religious forms and ceremonies prac- 



loo Observations 

tised, and to many recluse orders — 
cloistered friars and barefoot monks, 
leading lives of useless isolation, and 
whom Erasmus called " the scourge 
of the Church and the curse of 

En 
urope. 

Much will depend upon the char- 
acter and views of the next two or 
three Popes, for I find that intelligent 
Catholics of America have more in 
common with their dissenting broth- 
ers and neighbors than they have 
with this Italian and Spanish Catholi- 
cism, so bigoted and foolish as not to 
see the trend of events, and who pre- 
fer to spend their time intermeddling 
with the Catholic hierarchy of Amer- 
ica, Instead of trying to elevate their 
own people to the high moral and 



Observations loi 

intellectual standard of American 
Catholics. 

There is no nation more fond of 
their own country than the French. 
The German has no patriotism ; he 
emigrates at the first opportunity, and 
is never so happy as when he returns 
to Germany, flaunting his naturaliza- 
tion papers in every one's face. The 
Frenchman's love of his country mili- 
tates against the prosperity of France 
to a certain extent, for while he re- 
mains at home, waiting for the mer- 
chants of the world to come to Paris, 
the restless German, having no par- 
ticular attachment to his " Father- 
land," Is to be found in every quarter 
of the inhabited globe, peddling his 
wares. Germany certainly is making 



I02 Observations 

rapid progress in commercial affairs, 
and giving England a close quarter. 

While alluding to the death of 
Faure, and the illness of the Pope, I 
am led to write of European funeral 
customs. It is considered far more 
respectful for both men and women 
to walk at a public funeral, if they 
are able to do so, rather than ride. 
The new President of the Erench 
Republic, Loubet, sixty-two years of 
age, Senators and Representatives, 
and a vast army of distinguished men 
walked at Eaure's funeral over a dis- 
tance of five miles, the funeral com- 
mencing at lo A.M., and ending at 
5 P.M. The immediate male rela- 
tives walked the entire distance bare- 
headed. Six large, two-horse vans, 



Observations 103 

loaded with beautiful wreaths, sent 
from all over Europe, preceded the 
hearse that contained the mortal re- 
mains of him who was once a poor 
tanner boy, and died President of the 
French Republic. 

But the most pathetic and touching 
part of all that magnificent funeral 
pageant (and the French are always 
doing some such thing) was two little 
girls, dressed respectively in the cos- 
tumes of Alsace and Lorraine — the 
" lost provinces." Each child was led 
by the hand of an older girl, likewise 
in the dress of the provinces of which 
Germany ruthlessly robbed France 
in 1870. These girls carried black 
flags, one inscribed in letters of gold 
with the name of Strasbourg, the 



104 Observations 

other with that of Metz. The crowd 
cheered, and cheered, and cheered. 

Whenever a funeral procession 
passes along the street, every man, 
young and old, prince and beggar, 
uncovers his head while it is passing. 
In every cemetery the grave-stones 
are literally covered with wreaths, 
varying in size from one to three or 
four feet in diameter, and made of 
glass beads of different colors, many 
of them of exquisite designs ; these 
are allowed to remain in the ceme- 
teries for many years. Pictures of 
the deceased members of the family 
are also attached to the tombs. 
These things give to their cemeteries 
a much more cheerful and attractive 
appearance than have some of those 



Observations 105 

cold and heartless New England 
grave-yards, the very looks of which 
freeze the marrow in one's bones. 

Now, in closing, let me touch on 
another custom, perhaps more pleas- 
ing and interesting. 

There are no girls on the Continent : 
they are either children or married 
women. The parents make all the 
matches and marriage arrangements, 
and no young unmarried lady is al- 
lowed to meet a gentleman except in 
the presence of her parents, govern- 
ess, or maid. Every girl is expected 
to bring an allowance — a " dot " — to 
her husband, the amount being deter- 
mined by her surroundings. Usually 
the younger girls in the poorer fami- 
lies work and save money to make up 



io6 Observations 

the dot of the oldest sister. Many- 
young women, seeing no prospect of 
their parents, being able to raise for 
them a dot, and therefore no chance 
of marriage, join the Holy orders. 
This is one reason, I am told, why 
there are so many more nuns in Eu- 
rope than in America. In many 
Continental countries, the priests, 
monks, and nuns receive an annual 
allowance from the State, varying In 
amount, for their support. 

Weddings are celebrated in Europe 
about the middle of the day ; the 
friends ride to some church, the bride 
and bridegroom riding in a carriage 
nearly all glass, and people cheer 
them on their way. At all weddings 
of any importance, and, by the way, 



Observations 107 

there are no house weddings in Eu- 
rope, a collection for the poor is taken 
up in the church. After the mar- 
riage ceremony, they all return to the 
house of the bride's parents, partake 
of a lunch, and then generally go out 
into the woods, or to some fine 
retired restaurant, and dance and 
spend the rest of the day in happy 
reunion and celebration. At niorht 
they all return to the home already 
prepared, and bidding the newly 
married couple a long life and much 
happiness, they depart to their re- 
spective homes. People here say it 
destroys all the romance, and bor- 
ders on barbarism, to send a newly 
married couple on a long and tire- 
some wedding journey, when of all 



io8 Observations 

other times they need the privacy 
and rest of their own home. 

Americans know some things, but 
they don't know everything, — at 
least how to get the most comfort 
out of Hfe. 



TWELFTH LETTER 

A S the time draws nearer, the pub- 
^^ He interest in the Exposition of 
1900 increases. The money is all 
raised, to wit : $20,000,000. The 
French Government contributes 
$4,000,000, the city of Paris $4,- 
000,000; and there are $12,000,000 
worth of bonds sold for twenty francs, 
each bond entitlino- the holder to 
twenty admissions to the Exposi- 
tion ; and the holders, moreover, par- 
ticipate in a lottery, the prizes ranging 
from $20 up to $100,000, and also in 
a reduction of twenty-five per cent, for 
109 



iio Observations 

admission to all places of amusement 
within the boundaries of the Fair, and 
in a reduction on railroad fares through- 
out France during the Exposition. 
Any profits resulting from the Expo- 
sition, over and above the daily ex- 
penses, will be divided between the 
city of Paris and France. These 
bonds, as you will see, are an in- 
genious financial device, as well as 
a source of speculation and excite- 
ment to the people of France. 

Landlords are already engaging 
their rooms, and prices for rooms, or 
apartments, will be, during the Fair, 
double the usual price. Parisians ex- 
pect to rent their apartments at fabu- 
lous prices, and go into the country 
themselves, Americans, coming to 



Observations 1 1 1 

the Exposition, would do well to stop 
at a boarding-house, or pension, as 
they are called in Europe, in one of 
the beautiful suburbs of Paris. You 
will be sure of a good room, good 
board, and good bed, for one-half 
what you will pay in Paris, and also 
escape all the noise and imposition of 
a crowded city. 

Many things will seem strange to 
an American who comes to visit what 
will undoubtedly be the most wonder- 
ful display of human invention and 
genius the world has ever seen. He 
will look with amazement at the old- 
time elevators in the hotels, run by 
water, and which go creeping up and 
down like a truant boy to his flog- 
ging. Then he will be disgusted 



112 Observations 

with the candles in his room, in this 
age of gas and electricity ; with the 
bare, waxed floors, which it takes a 
dancing master to get over gracefully ; 
with being compelled to furnish his 
own soap ; and, when he eats at a cafe, 
to be charged for the use of the knives, 
table-cloth, and napkins. He will 
not find a rocking-chair in any home 
on the Continent, and rarely a carpet, 
nor will he find a man sitting with his 
feet higher than his head, or chewing 
tobacco or smokingf a ciofar on the 
street, but a cigarette, if anything. 
He will find no bar where he can 
" guzzle," but will be invited, if he 
wants to drink, to sit down and drink 
quietly at a table, either Inside or 
outside of the cafe. The proprietor 



Observations 113 

of the cafe pays the city for the privi- 
lege of putting a row of chairs in 
front, on the sidewalk. He will not 
see a gentleman lighting his cigar or 
cigarette from one in use by another 
person. Even the request to do so 
would be regarded as an act of great 
impropriety. He will not see a 
bell on any railroad engine in all 
Europe, and he will ride in cars, in 
most of which a man cannot stand 
erect and keep on his silk hat. He 
will miss soda fountains, peanut 
stands, ice-cream saloons, chewing- 
gum, sweet corn, pies, and dried 
beef ; these things are all unknown 
in Europe. 

He will see cows and goats driven 
through the streets, stopping at the 



114 Observations 

different houses, and being- milked as 
customers order. He will see, all over 
Europe, women kneeling on stones 
or boards, on the margins of rivers 
or streams, washing clothes, doing 
just the same as woman has been 
doing on this Eastern Hemisphere 
ever since she left the Garden of 
Eden, and put on clothing. Well- 
water is all so hard, they must go to 
the brook, as the brook will not come 
to them. 

He will see wood, eggs, and nearly 
all farm produce sold by weight. He 
will see people picking up orange 
peel, stumps of cigars, and ends of 
ciearettes from the orutters and side- 
walks, to be used in various money- 
making ways. Nothing is wasted 



Observations 115 

here. The city of Paris has recently 
contracted for the removal of its 
sweepings, for which it is to receive 
the sum of $400,000 in cash, besides 
having the garbage removed free out- 
side of the city limits. The 20,000 
rag-pickers are up in arms, and are 
holding mass meetings to protest 
against this interference with their 
ancient and time-honored rights, and 
thus depriving them also of what they 
call an honest livelihood. 

It is now proposed to light the city 
of London by burning the garbage, 
and thus generating steam sufficient 
to run the necessary dynamos to light 
the entire city free. 

A sign for a barber shop on the 
Continent is not a painted pole, but a 



ii6 Observations 

little brass basin hung in front of the 
shop by a wire passed through the 
rim of the basin. On the door of 
nearly every important barber shop 
you will see painted in large letters 
*' Lavatory," which means they have 
porcelain basins set in the side of the 
room, at which one can wash his face 
after being shaved, as that is consid- 
ered much more cleanly than to have 
the barber wash it with a sponge or 
towel. 

The cities erect little buildings, 
called kiosques, at street corners, and 
receive for them a larg-e rental from 
flower and newspaper venders. 

I advise all Americans, before start- 
ing for Europe, to go to some good 
country well, and there drink deep 



Observations 1 1 7 

and long, for they will not get an- 
other such drink until they return 
home. Well-water is rarely used 
in the greater part of Europe ; 
people drink either river -water, 
sometimes filtered, in such places as 
Paris, or more usually drink bottled 
waten Bottling water is an immense 
business, controlled mostly by the 
Government, the prices regulated by 
law, and no table is complete without 
a bottle of one of these many spring- 
waters, on sale in nearly every city 
and village on the Continent. In 
some places they drink rain-water. 

An old-time sea captain, my grand- 
father, told me once, that he always 
collected the rain-water from the 
decks of his ship, and that it would 



ii8 Observations 

purify itself in three months, and was 
then the best water in the world to 
drink. The well-water in Europe is so 
hard, or would be if there were wells, 
that no one dares drink it, as it is 
sure to produce stomach or kidney 
troubles. 

The Government makes several 
million dollars each year from the 
sale of these spring-waters. It col- 
lects a tax of $800,000 annually on ad- 
vertisements posted in public places, 
on the ground that they are forced 
upon the people, whether they like 
to see them or not. It seems strange 
to see an Internal Revenue stamp 
affixed to every public poster. The 
State is the greatest monopolist in 
Europe, oftentimes combining the 



Observations 119 

business of insurance agent, match- 
maker, tobacco merchant, bill-poster, 
railroading, express agent, telegraph 
operator, porcelain manufacturer, 
pawnbroker, etc. Every man who 
comes to France must be careful, for 
there is a fine of twenty cents per 
match, if you bring along your own 
matches. The amount of money the 
Government makes on business which 
it monopolizes, like matches, tobacco, 
drinking-water, pawn-shops, etc., is 
fabulous, but I have not time to-day to 
go into the figures. The matches are 
very poor, and one Englishman des- 
cribed them as " spluttering, and smell 
two minutes, and have a nasty habit of 
going out on the approach of a can- 
dle." You must burn these matches, 



I20 Observations 

or nothing ; you cannot import any 
matches, for an ordinary box of 
matches, Hke Bryant & May's, would 
not only be confiscated, but you 
would also be condemned to pay a 
fine of $ioo if you were detected 
in trying to bring one box into this 
country. 

It is hard to say which is the better 
system, the State monopolies of Eu- 
rope, or the trusts and syndicates (oil, 
matches, tobacco, thread, etc.) of 
America, which are closing many 
shops with relentless rigor, under 
the guise of economy ; strangling in 
a boa-constrictor grip many a pretty 
factory village ; and bringing sadness 
and want to many an honest laboring 
man's home, even in our own beloved 



Observations 121 

New England. It is true in Europe, 
it is also, alas, too true in America 
to-day, that " millions are made on 
the turn of a trade, and the toppling 
mass grows and grows, while in its 
shadow starvation and despair stalk 
among the people, and swarm with 
increasing legions against the citadels 
of human life." 



m 



THIRTEENTH LETTER 

IT is wonderful to notice the amount 
of business carried on in Europe 
exclusively by women. They con- 
duct bakers', butchers', and grocers' 
shops, coal and wood yards, and, in 
fact, you can hardly mention any kind 
of business in which they are not en- 
gaged. It is safe to say that one 
half the stores on the Continent are 
kept by women. The Bon Marche, 
perhaps the largest retail store in the 
world, employing in its various de- 
partments and factories over four 
thousand hands, was owned and 

122 



Observations 123 

controlled in a masterly manner for 
twenty-five years by a woman. On 
her demise, a few months ago, the 
business was taken up by a joint 
stock company, and it is generally 
thought not to be at present so well 
managed. 

One time when I was at a cele- 
brated hostelry in Milan, Italy, a little, 
old, drawn-over woman came into the 
office, and climbed up into a chair, to 
see how many rooms were occupied, 
as the numbers of the rooms and the 
occupants' names were posted on a 
blackboard. I asked who she was, 
and was told that she was the pro- 
prietress ; that she had accumulated a 
vast fortune in the hotel business, 
and while her children revelled in 



124 Observations 

luxury, both at home and abroad, 
she stayed and attended to the busi- 
ness. 

A census taken six years before 
Queen Victoria came to the throne, 
showed no woman in the whole Brit- 
ish Empire engaged in any service 
other than that of domestic ; while 
the last census showed 61,000 dress- 
makers ; 70,000 employed in public 
houses ; 4500 in printing establish- 
ments ; 41 2 1 in mines; and 30,000 
in the post-offices. In the tobacco 
industry there are 121 women to 100 
men ; in the hemp and jute, 195 wo- 
men to 100 men, and a somewhat 
similar proportion is maintained in a 
vast majority of the industrial pur- 
suits. There are, in the three king- 



Observations 125 

doms, over 130,000 female teachers 
— three times the number of male 
teachers. 

Many an English statesman owes 
his election to the efforts of his wife 
on the hustings, bringing the voters to 
the polls in their luxurious carriages, 
and bewitching them by their wit and 
their beauty. It was the Duchess 
of Gordon who went from hamlet to 
hamlet in Scotland, and recruited 
that world-famous regiment, to-day 
the pride and glory of the British 
army — the Gordon Highlanders. 

The figures which I have given 
relative to England will apply, in a 
greater or less degree, to nearly every 
country in Europe. On the Conti- 
nent you will see women carrying 



126 Observations 

hods, unloading coal, and doing the 
hardest kinds of work. It is calcu- 
lated they are doing one half of the 
farm work, for they are to be seen 
everywhere working in the fields, and 
oftentimes there is not a man to be 
seen. To-day there are 60,000 sol- 
diers stationed at Vienna and looking 
on, while thousands of women are 
toiling at mixing mortar, carrying 
hods, and laying stones for a great 
palace now being built for the Im- 
perial family. These women are paid 
forty cents a day. 

There are several reasons for these 
conditions. Three million men, with 
guns in their hands, are withdrawn 
from industrial pursuits, and the sup- 
port of the families devolves upon 



Observations 127 

the women, Besides, women are 
more industrious, more temperate, 
and more tractable than men, and 
it looks as if, in time, the Euro- 
pean man will relegate himself to 
the position of the North Ameri- 
can Indian — play golf, race horses, 
hunt, fish, indulge in pow-wows 
and war, leaving the care and sup- 
port of the family, and the con- 
ducting of every-day affairs, to the 
women. 

Let any man stop and think what 
progress woman has made in fifty 
years, and that to-day the rising gen- 
eration of females far outstrip in 
talent, in industry, in sobriety, and in 
ambition their male competitors, and 
no man can measure or foretell what 



128 Observations 

woman may not accomplish in the 
next one hundred years. 

The same wonderful change is go- 
ing on in our own country, only it 
goes on so slowly and so smoothly, 
we hardly realize the truth. It would 
be astounding, and almost beyond be- 
lief, if we were to see at one glance 
what progress women have made in 
the United States In fifty years, in 
the commercial, industrial, and edu- 
cational world. I marvelled when 
I learned from my friend, Mr. C. P. 
Clark, the President, while crossing 
the Atlantic last summer, that the 
list of stockholders of the Consoli- 
dated Railroad embraces the names of 
several thousand women. 

Since this century opened, Europe 



Observations 129 

has lost by the ravages of war (and 
nearly every war was either childish 
or nonsensical), in killed or disabled, 
over 15,000,000 men. The eighteen 
astronomers who are engaged in all 
quarters of the globe in photograph- 
ing and making maps of the stars, 
and who expect to complete their 
task in 1924, and to exhibit to the 
admiring gaze of their fellow-men a 
map of 20,000,000 stars, have an easy 
task beside the man, or men, who will 
catalogue the men who have been 
killed by war, rum, or tobacco, during 
this century. 

While the men have been playing 
the *' fool act" of killing^ each other 
in battle, or themselves by drink, or 
squandering their time in politics, or 



130 Observations 

games, or watching the market, wo- 
men have been driven by the force 
of circumstances to fill up the gaps 
and supply the means of subsistence 
for themselves and families. All 
glory to the woman ! 

To-day she carries on her shoul- 
ders, and in her heart, nearly all there 
is left of the Christian reliofion in 
Europe, bequeathed by the Master; 
and without her countenance and 
support, owls and bats would be about 
the only frequenters of the magnifi- 
cent cathedrals which g^em the land- 
scape of Europe, or " the thousand 
temples of the Most High that nestle 
in its happy valleys and crown its 
swelling hills." Popes, Bishops, 
Priests, and Clergymen, the vast ma- 



Observations 131 

jority of them, would be without Hs- 
teners or sympathizers, and their 
services would be time and labor lost, 
without women. 

Do not for a moment think that 
woman occupies only a menial, a mer- 
cenary, or a religious position in 
Europe ; for it is a woman's head 
and a woman's heart which to-day 
largely guides the destinies of the 
mightiest nation on earth, whether 
for weal or for woe. It is a proverb 
in English politics that English poli- 
ticians may bluster and threaten, but 
England will have no serious Euro- 
pean war so long as Victoria lives, 
as she will not give her signature, 
and without it there can be no war. 
There may be a few skirmishes in 



132 Observations 

India or Africa, to whet the appetite 
of her soldiers. 

The happiest people, and the most 
honest government in all Europe, 
and perhaps on either Hemisphere, 
submits to the mild and intellig-ent 
rule of Holland's proud young Queen, 
Wilhelmina. 

And there is still another Queen, 
who has borne her part with saintly 
majesty in all the trials through 
which her country has recently been 
called to pass, and who challenges the 
admiration of friend and foe alike. 
She has kept her country together by 
her wise counsel, her patient devo- 
tion to the public weal, and by her 
sublime womanly virtues, — Maria 
Christina, Queen Regent of Spain. 



Observations 133 

Her name will illumine the pages of 
history, long after the human race 
has gladly forgotten the names of 
those men who trailed the American 
flag in the dust, with their " em- 
balmed-beef scandals," and by the 
peevish jealousies of the great Re- 
public's naval commanders. 

It is interesting to note that the 
British Consul at Barcelona lately 
reports as follows : 

" Even the war did not very seri- 
ously affect the trade of Barcelona. 
Not a single failure in that busy 
manufacturing centre was reported. 
These facts seem to indicate that, 
after all, the loss to Spain of her 
colonies will not involve ruin, but 
may, by relieving her of an intolera- 



134 Observations 

ble military and naval burden, actu- 
ally pave the way to a period of 
comparative prosperity among the 
working classes of Spain." 



FOURTEENTH LETTER 

/'^NE great problem to-day absorbs 
^"^^ the attention of all thinking 
people in Europe. Editors, authors, 
statesmen, philosophers, philanthro- 
pists, and clergymen are discussing 
it, and this one great question con- 
cerns civilized man everywhere. It 
is that of disarmament. 

I attended, recently, a banquet in 
Paris, and heard W. T. Stead, editor 
of The Review of Reviews, state that 
in his recent interview with the Czar 
he declared as follows : "I do not 
wish my worst enemy the troubles 
that oppress me." 

135 



136 Observations 

Well might he have added : 

" A crown, 
Golden in show, is but a wreath of thorns, 
Brings dangers, troubles, cares, and sleepless 

nights 
To him who wears the regal diadem," 

This young ruler, pressed by des- 
tiny into a position of authority and 
responsibility which he cannot shirk, 
confronted by questions that puzzle 
and distract the wisest statesmen, is 
vainly trying to stem the tide of 
armament which must end either in 
the bankruptcy of his and other na- 
tions, or in the annihilation, by mod- 
ern Satanic military enginery, of a 
whole people. War is hell, but the 
next war in Europe will be a triple 
hell. 



Observations 137 

A prominent Warsaw banker has 
written an exhaustive work of six 
vohimes, It is said with the approval 
of the Czar, declaring there can be no 
future war ; that with modern repeat- 
ing weapons, 115 per cent, more 
effective than those used in the 
Franco-Prussian war, and with smoke- 
less powder, no army can ever again 
confront another army ; that one or 
the other, perhaps both, will be 
mowed to the earth long before they 
are within shouting distance. It Is 
not open, manly warfare, but total 
annihilation that hangs over the next 
European conflict. 

The trouble all dates from the Fran- 
co-Prussian war. In 1868 Russia, 
France, Austria, Italy, and Germany 



138 Observations 

spent annually on their armies $450,- 
000,000; to-day they spend $875, 000,- 
000. These five powers had, in 1868, 
4,500,000 men on a war footing; to- 
day they have 17,500,000 men. 

The debt of France has risen since 
1870 from $2,000,000,000 to $6,300,- 
000,000 ; of Russia from $1,500,000,- 
000 to $4,500,000,000 ; and Germany 
has added $3,000,000,000 in the same 
time to her debt. 

Another war between France and 
Germany would be Titanic, and, to use 
an expression common here, one or 
the other would be bled " as white as 
veal." There would be 7,000,000 men 
in the field, fully armed and equipped, 
and the fairest portions of Europe 
(no land on which the wheeling sun 



Observations 139 

shines is more highly cultivated, or 
more beautiful to the eye) would be a 
veritable hell after it had been swept 
by the carnage and devastation of 
grim-visaged war. The atmosphere 
would be befouled by the decaying 
bodies of a million slaugrhtered soldiers 
and the very heavens lighted by the 
fires of its sacked and burning cities. 
A contest between thirty modern 
battle-ships would, it is estimated, 
cost $5,000,000 an hour. A careful 
writer has calculated that " a naval 
war between England, France, and 
Russia would cost two or three times 
as much as the purchase of all the 
land in England — as much as the 
revenue of England for a whole 
century." 



I40 Observations 

Only last week Mr. Goschen, in the 
British Parliament, while laying be- 
fore them the new proposals of the 
Government for increased expendi- 
tures in the navy and army, admitted 
that *' England has doubled her war- 
like expenditures in fifteen years, and 
the financial outlook is most serious ; 
but, if it is serious in this country of 
great wealth, what must the burdened 
people of Russia, France, and Ger- 
many be thinking in face of their own 
increase ? " 

But oh, how difficult, how beyond 
all human calculation or ability, to 
stem the tide of these martial extrav- 
agances and follies ! So many things 
tend to promote and keep alive the 
fear, the dread of being whipped, or 



Observations 141 

overrun, or outgeneralled, by their 
neighbors. The map of Europe 
needs rearranging. Every country 
has some portion which it holds only 
by force, and almost every nation 
covets some portion of its neighbor's 
land. Then there is the fear of so- 
cialism, so strong and so popular 
aipong the laboring masses, and no- 
where so strong as in Germany, poll- 
ing over a million and a quarter votes 
at the last election. Then there is 
the labor question. The labor mar- 
ket is already glutted, and thousands 
must either emigrate or starve, and 
how much worse will be the con- 
dition of affairs, if a million soldiers 
are thrown into competition with 
those who are now barely able to find 



142 Observations 

employment, or earn a living. One 
million men come of age every year 
in Russia alone. 

Then there is that foolish, nonsen- 
sical sentiment, which one finds im- 
planted in the human heart, from the 
Kafihr negro — described by Sir Harry 
Johnson in his recent exhaustive work, 
British Cc?itral Africa, as wearing 
" only a string around his waist with a 
piece of money attached, to show that 
if he has no clothes It is not because 
he has not the money " — up to the 
Archbishop of Canterbury, the Pri- 
mate of the Established Church of 
England. Through all classes and 
ranks, unclad savages and European 
savants, paupers and millionaires, 
fools and scholars, runs that myste- 



Observations 143 

rlous, that inexplicable craze, infatua- 
tion, worship of the man on horseback, 
and it is this predominant element in 
human character which governs and 
controls largely the action of man, 
and the masses, throughout this inhab- 
ited orb. Wars are popular with sav- 
age and civilized nations alike, and 
have been ever since Adam walked 
out of the Garden of Eden, a crest- 
fallen, but a wiser man. 

Again, the problem of disarm- 
ament is complicated by other and 
most serious questions. Europe is 
in the hands of a military hierarchy. 
Eight tenths of all the military and na- 
val officers belong to the aristocratic, 
non-productive, idle classes, who 
guard their privileges with demon-like 



144 Observations 

ferocity. No one knows the condi- 
tion of society in Europe who has not 
minorled in it for some time. Schol- 
ars, orators, philanthropists, milHon- 
aires, have no social standing beside 
the military element. A wealthy gen- 
tleman told me he served one year in 
the German army to obtain rank for 
himself, and for his family social rec- 
ognition. 

Again, there Is that other element 
— the vultures of society — who prey 
upon other people's misfortunes — 
the money-lenders, and the men 
who make money on the turn of the 
market. A noisy. Insane rabble, de- 
moralizing to legitimate trade, who 
congregate at every Bourse In Europe, 
co-laborers with that other "gang" 



Observations 145 

which pHes its nefarious trade in 
Wall Street, and who are ever ready 
to support any scheme, uphold any 
government, defend any extrava- 
gance, so long as it brings grist to 
their mill. 

Some great thinkers in Europe 
have recently expressed themselves 
as believino- that no gfood can come 
of the International Conference at 
Hague ; that all these frightful ex- 
penses and preparations must go on 
until some one power alone domi- 
nates the politics and the nations of 
Europe, as Rome once dominated the 
world ; and the question is whether it 
is to be England or Russia ; whether 
the Anglo-Saxon or the Slav, in the 
next century or two, is to rule, as the 



146 Observations 

Goths and Vandals once ruled this 
same continent. 

That sleeping giant, who occupies 
one sixth of the land on this planet, 
who can marshal the mightiest army 
the world has ever seen, whose pro- 
digious strides in population and 
wealth are among the marvels of the 
nineteenth century, is an enigma and 
a puzzle which the wisest statesman 
cannot solve. Never, since this globe 
swung out into space and commenced 
to spin In Its orbit around the sun, 
has one man ever held In his hands 
so nearly the destiny of so many 
people, or could wield so much power 
for good or for evil, as the present 
Czar of all the Russias. What a 
commentary upon human progress, 



Observations 147 

that twenty centuries after the rise 
and fall of the Grecian and Roman 
Republics, the great mass of the peo- 
ple of Europe are still struggling to 
secure those rights and privileges 
which were accorded to every Roman 
and Athenian citizen ! Will the race 
be any better off twenty centuries 
hence ? Is history only repeating it- 
self from one cycle of time to an- 
other ? 

It would be interesting to come 
back here in 500 years and see what 
has come out of all this human mud- 
dle ; what changes have taken place 
in the world ; what nations have dis- 
appeared ; what governments van- 
ished ; what progress, if any, the race 
has made ; and to see how near Abra- 



148 Observations 

ham Lincoln came to the truth, " that 

government of the people, by the 

people, and for the people shall not 

perish from the earth." 

Shakespeare said, " Time is the 

nurse and breeder of all good." But 

Wordsworth said : 

** Time flies ; it is his melancholy task 
To bring, and bear away delusive hopes, 
And reproduce the trouble he destroys." 
Both, I think, were partly right 

and partly wrong. 



FIFTEENTH LETTER 

TT is much the same in Europe as in 
* America, every thoughtful person 
is astonished upon seeing in cold fig- 
ures the consumption of beverages. 

England, Scotland, and Wales 
consumed last year beverages to 
the amount of $762,400,670, or, 
per head of estimated population 
which includes, of course, men, wo- 
men, children, and babies, the appal- 
ling figures of $19.20. It would, 
if laid edge to edge, make a chain 
2089 miles of $20 gold pieces, or 

would take 1205 two-horse drays, 

149 



ISO Observations 

each drawing 2000 pounds' weight 
of gold, or it would cover solid the 
track of the New York, New Haven 
& Hartford Railroad, between two 
rails, from New Haven to Hartford 
with $20 gold pieces, or it would take 
one man almost six years to count the 
amount, allowing one $20 gold piece 
to a second. It is claimed that on 
account of the cold, raw climate of 
England, persons require, and can 
consume, more liquor than elsewhere. 
It is useless to enumerate in figures 
the total consumption of liquors in 
Europe, but I simply refer to one or 
two items to illustrate the magnitude 
of the subject. The demand of the 
world yearly for French champagne 
is about 22,000,000 bottles, and, great 



Observations 151 

as this demand is, it can be met for 
some years by the stock on hand at 
Rheims ; one concern alone keeps a 
reserve of 9,000,000 bottles. English 
and Americans are the best customers 
for French champagnes ; one rarely 
sees it drunk here, but Americans 
give their nationality dead away when- 
ever they attempt to drink it in 
France, for the French always drink 
champagne half wine and half water, 
and look upon Americans as semi- 
civilized in drinkinof it clear. France 
lost 3,000,000 acres by the Franco- 
Prussian war, but this was a small 
calamity compared with the Phyl- 
loxera. More than 4,000,000 acres 
of vintage, representing a value of 
$1,000,000,000, were wholly or par- 



fy 



152 Observations 

tially destroyed by this insect from 
1865 to 1876. So great is the con- 
sumption of wine in France that she 
imports 50 per cent, more wine than 
she exports. 

The number of wine shops in 
France in 1830 was 281,847, but to- 
day they number 424,500, or one 
wine shop to eighty-five of the popu- 
lation, or one to every thirty adults. 
It does not seem possible that every 
thirty men and women support a grog 
shop. In some parts of France there 
is a wine shop for every forty-six in- 
habitants. It is proposed now to 
limit each new license to one per 
every 300 inhabitants, not interfering, 
however, with existing shops. 

A French physician told me that 



Observations 153 

one cocktail made many a Frenchman 
drunk because he talked so much, 
while if he did not talk the liquor 
would not affect him. This fact has 
often been repeated to me, both in 
France and Italy. The vilest and 
most injurious drink in this country 
is absinthe, a decoction from worm- 
wood, which paralyzes the brain and 
rapidly ruins the constitution. 

But it has fallen to the lot of Russia, 
occupying, as it does, one sixth of the 
inhabited globe, and containing one 
thirteenth of the entire population of 
the world, to solve this liquor problem, 
and it looks to-day as if she will be com- 
pelled to solve many another problem 
in European politics, and, perhaps, in 
the politics of the two Hemispheres. 



154 Observations 

Russia, being an absolute despot- 
ism, occupies a unique position, and 
can carry out social reforms which 
no other nation is able even to 
inaugurate. It would be highly in- 
teresting, if it were permitted to 
us, to watch for the next two hun- 
dred years the development, side by 
side, of one nation under a despotic, 
and another under a republican form 
of government. Russia in 1895 as- 
sumed absolute control of the liquor 
business of the Empire, buying from 
the distilleries at a uniform price, 
and the price charged the consumer, 
whether by the dealer or the State, is 
the same, the State taking a commis- 
sion of fifteen per cent., and allowing 
the dealer a commission in proportion 



Observations 155 

to the quantity sold, but so trifling an 
amount as to offer him but the sHg^ht- 
est inducement to push the sales. 
The liquor is of uniform quality every- 
where. 

This has resulted in reducing drunk- 
enness, deposits in savings-banks have 
increased, the State's revenue has been 
augmented, and that great and grow- 
ing evil, which threatens the life of 
every civilized nation on the globe, 
has been once, in the history of the 
human race, shackled to the car of 
reason. 

Another subject, just as vital to a 
nation's prosperity, to wit : the main- 
tenance of a healthy population, is 
foremost in the minds of many states- 
men in Europe. 



156 Observations 

Since 1891 the deaths in France 
have exceeded the births, and there 
has been an annual loss In population 
of 20,000. France cannot, like Amer- 
ica, replenish her population through 
a Castle Garden, but must depend 
upon her own people. A law has 
lately been passed forbidding the use 
of long rubber tubes attached to feed- 
ing bottles, because of the difficulty 
in keeping them sterilized ; it has also 
been made a crime to give solid food 
to a child under one year of age, 
except on the written prescription 
of a physician, and a guilty per- 
son may be punished for an at- 
tempt to kill. They are determined, 
if possible, to preserve what babies 
God gives them. Premature feeding 



Observations 157 

makes what women call fat and 
handsome babies, but doctors say 
they make too often pretty corpses. 

While it is true that in this blessed 
year of our Lord, among certain tribes 
in Africa, over which England claims 
sovereignty, the first-born, if a girl, is 
ruthlessly murdered, woman in Eu- 
rope has a commercial value beyond 
all calculation. It would seem as if 
the ultimate success or failure of 
French, German, and, perhaps, Amer- 
ican colonial schemes is not to de- 
pend upon armies or navies, not upon 
Deweys or Otises, but upon women. 
The French Government, to meet an 
imperative demand from her colonies 
(if the colonies are to thrive), has 
opened agencies in different parts of 



158 Observations 

France to secure women emigrants ; 
approved candidates will each be pro- 
vided with a trousseau, free passage, 
and a small sum of money to enable 
them to live for a time after landing, 
and until marriages can be arranged. 

Any one who is familiar with the 
early history of Louisiana will remem- 
ber how the Colonists awaited with 
great excitement the arrival of ships 
brineinof the women sent out from 
Paris to supply them with wives. 

All history largely repeats itself, 
and we, as a people, are perhaps 
only re-enacting, on a grander scale, 
the history of bygone nations in 
our Imperial policy, and in our at- 
tempt to shoot civilization Into distant 
tribes and reap, if possible, the bene- 



Observations 159 

fits of a reviving commerce, instead 
of trying to Christianize them. How- 
ever, it will be worthy of boast, to 
those who live until January i, 1900, 
that they have witnessed the close of 
what was, beyond all doubt, with all 
its errors, failures, and cruelties, the 
most significant and splendid century 
thus far in the history of mankind. 

The brightest beacon that beckons 
us on to the future is the wonderful 
progress the race has made in the last 
century. It was Gladstone who said, 
" It was well to be reminded, and in 
tones to make the deaf man hear, of 
city children who soak and blacken 
soul and sense in city slime ; of maid- 
ens cast by thousands in the street ; 
of the seamstress scrimped of her 



i6o Observations 

daily bread ; of dwellings miserably 
crowded, of fever as the result ; 
nevertheless slavery had been abol- 
ished, the criminal code reformed, 
good schools had been put within 
the reach of the poor, laboring people 
were working fewer hours for in- 
creased wages, and that upon the 
whole, the race had been reaping, and 
not scattering ; earning, and not wast- 
ing." No better epitaph has been 
written for the nineteenth century, 
now so nearly expired. 



SIXTEENTH LETTER 

A CENTURY and a quarter ago 
'*• the famous American statesman, 
Thomas Jefferson, rode on horseback 
from Paris, over the Savoy mountains, 
down into Italy ; stopping at country 
houses to study the wants, the com- 
plaints, and the occupations of the 
peasants ; and trying to learn some- 
thing which might be of benefit to his 
countrymen. That country is to-day 
what it has been for five hundred 
years — a marvel of agricultural devel- 
opment. 

There is no incident more unique 

i6i 



1 62 Observations 

in the life of that great man than when 
in Italy he purchased some "seed" 
rice, which he desired to send to South 
Carolina for cultivation, and they 
would not let him take it across the 
borders of the country ; so he filled 
his pockets with the rice and thus 
eluded the Custom officials, who 
wished to prevent the export to 
America of this superior quality of 
rice. From this small beginning 
sprung the great rice industry of the 
South. 

Every day I stop by the wayside 
and regard wonderingly the ways in 
which these people, with endless care 
and patience, train apple and pear 
trees, some growing along a wire like 
a vine, level with the ground ; some 



Observations i6 



J 



crooked and resembling coiled snakes 
standing erect, others trained to run 
around hoops, looking for all the world 
like the hoops of a barrel, while others 
grow up the sides of a house like rose 
bushes. I have also seen the sides 
of houses, some thirty or forty feet 
high, one solid bank of roses, or cov- 
ered with the branches of a pear tree. 
A great industry in the South of 
France is the making of perfumes from 
rose and orange blossoms, but the 
largest quantity is made from gerani- 
ums, using the blossoms, the leaves, 
and the stalks. In warm and shel- 
tered places it is possible to cut the 
crop four times a year. This is an 
industry which should flourish well 
in California, as the product is so 



164 Observations 

concentrated that freight charges are 
small, leaving a large margin of profit 
to the agriculturists. 

Some years ago, I was crossing a 
valley in the Alps, where the cele- 
brated Gruyere cheese is made. I 
saw the peasants turn out their cows 
into pastures where the grass was so 
tall the cattle were soon lost to si^ht 
as they wandered through the fields, 
which were one mingled mass of 
grass and wild flowers, so sweet as to 
remind one of some great flower bed, 
and this accounts largely for the ex- 
cellence of the cheese. Each spot of 
earth seems to be adapted to its own 
particular use. 

That wonderful man, Jefferson, 
who stood for hours, until people 



Observations 165 

thouofht him mad, in admiration of 
what he called the most beautiful 
specimen of architecture in the world, 
known as the " Square House " in the 
Place des Arenes, at Nimes, carried 
back from Italy not alone rice, but 
vines and workmen to cultivate them, 
who subsequently wrought such great 
progress in the development of Vir- 
ginia. Wine at twenty-four cents a 
gallon is a very profitable crop, and 
is the main agricultural industry of 
all this part of Europe. Two million 
persons are employed in the vineyards 
of France, each person averaging 500 
gallons of wine, or twenty-five gallons 
yearly for every man, woman, and 
child in France. Official reports in- 
dicate that the total vintage of 



1 66 Observations 

France, including Algeria and Tunis, 
will produce 1,200,000,000 gallons, 
the estimated value of which is 
$190,000,000. 

To one who keeps eyes and ears 
open, strange things are constantly 
presenting themselves. Here cows 
are used instead of oxen for drawing 
loads and ploughing, as well as for 
their milk; the "oil dip," the same 
as explorers find among the ruins 
of Luxor and Carthag-e, and such 
as served as a light in the days of 
the Saviour — "the sinless teacher" 
— is still in use. You will see quan- 
tities of bread for sale made from 
chestnut flour, and butcher shops 
where no other viand but horseflesh 
is for sale. In 1894, 23,186 horses 



Observations 167 

were slaughtered and sold as food In 
France, and twice as many more in 
Germany and Austria. It is well a 
new use has been found for the horse, 
otherwise, like the buffalo of the 
plains, he may become an extinct 
animal. There are in France alone 650 
manufactories of automobiles, employ- 
ing 100,000 workmen. It looks as if 
the horse, before the close of the 
twentieth century, will be entirely dis- 
carded in Europe for all use except for 
racing purposes, cavalry, and meat. 
There is a society in France for the 
promotion of the consumption of horse 
meat as a food, claiming for it superior 
hygienic virtues as well as gastronomic 
qualities over all other meat, and that 
as the horse is a much cleaner animal 



1 68 Observations 

than the hog, therefore the meat must 
be healthier. To cap the chmax, we 
learn that the French are now makincr 
sausages from cat-meat. It is nice to 
know that the cat is good for some- 
thing. 

Another thing which will attract 
your attention while traveling on 
the Continent is the ever present 
and ever delusive lottery scheme. 
They are sanctioned by the State. 
The German Government derives an 
annual income of $20,000,000 from 
lotteries; the Italian, $15,000,000; 
the Portuguese, $4,000,000 ; the 
Danish, $250,000; and the Dutch, 
$250,000. The lotteries are gener- 
ally held on Saturday afternoon in 
the principal cities of the various 



Observations 169 

countries, and, strange to say, are 
patronized quite liberally by wealthy 
women for the excitement, the same 
as many leading society women in 
England to-day are breeding dogs 
and cats, and racing horses. 

As you wander through the nar- 
row and crooked streets of the cities 
and the villages (more especially in 
the South of Europe), the second 
stories of houses overhaneino^ the 
streets, the windows small, the roofs 
either thatched with straw or cov- 
ered with ancient tile, the stairs lead- 
ing to the upper stories laid with 
stone steps, and one end of the 
house devoted to the family and the 
other end to the cattle (these houses, 
dating back some three or four cen- 



1 70 Observations 

turies), you can easily fancy that from 
out of such houses as these came 
Columbus and the men who went 
with him on that perilous voyage 
across the wild Atlantic in a tiny 
caravel, which modern seamen would 
deem a mere phantom boat. 

As one stands gazing at these 
houses, it is impossible to restrain 
the wish that once again the men 
and women who have dwelt in them 
might come trooping forth, just as 
they were accustomed to do in the 
centuries which are dead and gone. 
Not any novel ever written can ex- 
cel in interest the history (if truth- 
fully repeated) of the joys and the 
sorrows, the ambitions and the fail- 
ures, the hopes and the disappoint- 



Observations 171 

ments, the dreams and the reahsm, 
the tragedies and the comedies, 
connected with a bygone people. 
Such a book would surpass any 
romance ever printed, for it has 
been well said that one human life 
exceeds in pathos, in excitement, 
and in a healthful lesson, any novel 
as yet written or published in any 
language. 

It was Wordsworth who wrote : 

" Ah ! what a warning for a thoughtless man, 
Could field or grove, could any spot of 

earth. 
Show to his eye an image of the pangs 
Which it hath witnessed ; render back an 

echo 
Of the sad steps by which it hath been trod." 



SEVENTEENTH LETTER 

T^HROUGHOUT Europe, espe- 
cially in Germany, Italy, and 
Scandinavia, even in very remote 
villages, you will come across glaring 
circulars, printed in the language of 
the country, issued by railroad com- 
panies in the United States (the 
Texas and Pacific, the Union Pacific, 
the Iron Mountain), showing a pretty 
farm-house, and barns, a pair of ele- 
gant horses at the door, and fields 
fairly loaded with grain. The land 
is all for sale at one dollar an acre, 

and, to the foreigner, it is made to 
172 



Observations i 'iz 

look as if he had but to move right 
in and take comfortable possession ; 
while, in all probability, the land is 
either under water, or at the top of 
some mountain, or produces nothing 
better than sage-brush. It should 
be a crime to fool these people so. 

Jay Gould once told some gentle- 
men in London that when he was 
a boy he tried to tell the truth, but 
found people were more ready to 
believe a lie than the truth. It is 
undoubtedly true that his immense 
fortune was acquired by deceiving 
and hoodwinking the public. A pros- 
pectus of a railroad, a life insurance 
company, or any great business that 
told " the truth, and nothing but the 
truth," would fall flat. 



174 Observations 

Dennis C. Wilcox, once a leading 
business man of Connecticut, after- 
wards of New York City, related to 
me how at one time he was staying 
at the United States Hotel, in Sara- 
toga, where he met William H. 
Vanderbilt, with whom he was well 
acquainted. 

Mr. Vanderbilt told him that the 
New York Central Railroad was 
never so busy ; that they could not 
procure enough freight cars to do 
their business. 

Wilcox told me that on the 
strength of this conversation he 
bouofht a thousand shares of New 
York Central stock, kept them for 
a year, and then sold at a loss of a 
little over nineteen thousand dollars. 



Observations 175 

Afterwards he saw Mr. Vander- 
bilt and, recalling the conversation, 
told Mr. Vanderbilt of his purchase 
and loss. Mr. Vanderbilt smiled and 
said : " Why, Wilcox, did you buy 
at that time ? I was selling in those 
days." 

It is amusing to read in the papers 
the records of game shot by Kings, 
Emperors, Czars, Dukes, and Princes, 
under the heading, " A Royal Rec- 
ord," as if it were something worthy 
of great note. Thomas Jefferson 
says in his time it was customary 
to send couriers from one King or 
Prince to another, sometimes over 
hundreds of miles, announcing the 
result of a day's chase. He was so 
disgusted with royalty in Europe, one 



1 76 Observations 

hundred years ago, that he described 
it as "knowing but one interest in 
life — the slaughter of birds, deer, and 
pigs," and royalty has changed but 
little since Jefferson lived in Europe, 
if one only substitutes for " the slaugh- 
ter of birds, deer, and pigs," devotion 
to golf, horses, and yachts. Charles 
Kingsley, one of the noblest minds 
and sweetest souls the Christian 
Church has produced in this century, 
whose sublime teachings have minis- 
tered to the wants and cravinsfs of 
poor human hearts of this generation 
perhaps better than those of any 
other writer, followed the hounds in 
pursuit of hares across the fields, 
dressed as an English sporting gen- 
tleman. If the Rev. Leonard Bacon 



Observations 177 

of New Haven, or Rev. Horace 
Bushnell of Hartford, had ridden in 
sportsman's garb, with the hounds, 
across the hills and valleys of Con- 
necticut, their churches would have 
ostracised them, and their friends 
had them confined in some lunatic 
asylum. 

Hunting In Europe Is practically 
reserved for wealthy aristocrats, as 
every one must procure a license to 
hunt, and, In some countries, even to 
have a gun or pistol In your own 
house. The fee varies from five to 
thirty dollars a year. It is not un- 
usual to read of a person having 
been shot while poaching. If you 
find a man hunting on your grounds 
In Europe, and he does not leave 



178 Observations 

quickly upon being ordered off, you 
may shoot him down Hke a dog, and 
never fear punishment. In many 
cases men are shot without the least 
warning to quit. 

I have met two or three wealthy 
gentlemen who spoke of having 
killed men trespassing on their 
preserves as unconcernedly as an 
American soldier writes of killing a 
defenceless Filipino. It would seem 
as if it were high time another 
Christ was born to call a halt on 
the brutality of the existing human 
race, and preach anew the doctrine 
of kindness. 

Christopher Columbus, whose dis- 
covery of the New World advanced 
the progress and development of 



Observations 179 

mankind more than any other event 
in two thousand years, won the sym- 
pathy and love of the untutored sav- 
ages by showering- upon the captive 
people unwonted kindness, presenting 
them with beautiful clothing, beads, 
ornaments, and returning them to 
their native fastnesses as missionaries 
to win over their tribes. Columbus' 
methods are still In advance of the 
white man's government of to-day. 
Every boy and girl in America should 
read Washington Irving's Life of 
Cohmibus. 

The late strike of the postmen of 
Paris, which for two days caused an 
entire suspension of mall delivery, 
and was broken only by using sol- 
diers to distribute the mails, brings 



i8o Observations 

again to the surface the troubles and 
wrongs under which the toihng 
masses groan. 

The postman receives a salary of 
$240 a year. Under Napoleon III. 
there were 200,000 civil officers in 
France ; now there are 600,000, and 
the number increases at the rate of 
5000 every year. Even Republics 
come high. The French Govern- 
ment expends each year $100, on 
the average, for every man, woman, 
and child. They are now discussing 
the creation of a pension for the 
working classes in England, France, 
and Germany. It would be open- 
ing the door for electoral bidding, 
each candidate, or party, outbidding 
the other in promises to increase the 



Observations i8i 

pensions, until it would result in 
financial madness and national bank- 
ruptcy. The proposed scheme for an 
old-age pension now under discussion 
would cost the United Kingdom 
over one hundred and twenty-five 
million dollars per annum. The 
present Tory Government is commit- 
ted to some scheme of this kind. 
Thirty-eight per cent, of all persons 
over sixty-five years of age in Eng- 
land are paupers. A poor ending 
to a lifetime of toil. 

I meet in my travels many 
thoughtful men, who are saying it is 
better to be a citizen of some small 
power, like Switzerland, Belgium, or 
the Netherlands, than a great nation, 
whose vast conscripted army, un- 



1 82 observations 

toward navy, and unhallowed am- 
bition keeps it under a relentless 
taxation, and In an ever present 
peril of cruel war, and perhaps of 
annihilation. 

Oliver Goldsmith, the champion 
and poet of the common people, 
In descanting upon the extrava- 
gances of his age, and the tendency 
for the few to monopolize all the 
money and all the land of England, 
said : 

" I inveigh against the increase of 
our luxuries ; and here also I expect 
the shout of modern politicians 
against me. For twenty or thirty 
years past it has been the fashion to 
consider luxury as one of the greatest 
national advantages ; and all the wis- 



Observations 183 

dom of antiquity, in that particular, 

as erroneous. Still, however, I must 

remain a professed ancient on that 

head, and continue to think those 

luxuries prejudicial to States by 

which so many vices are introduced 

and so many kingdoms have been 

undone." 

And adds : 

" 111 fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, 
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay : 

A time there was, 'ere England's grief began. 
When every rood of ground maintained its 
man." 



EIGHTEENTH LETTER 

TT is hardly possible for any one to 
live long in Europe without becom- 
inof interested in that ever-absorbinor 
question, the religious and polit- 
ical power of the Catholic Church. 
That question is now more engross- 
ing than ever, owing to the illness of 
the Pope, and the necessity of soon 
electing another. There are at pres- 
ent twenty-two foreign, and twenty- 
six Italian Cardinals, and fourteen 
vacancies in the Sacred College, and 
a single vote may turn the scale. The 
Italians are determined that the Pope 



Observations 185 

shall be an Italian, and that their in- 
fluence shall continue supreme in the 
Church, as it has been for the last 
four hundred years. But there is a 
funny side to all this affair. A man 
high up in the Catholic Church, who 
lately visited the Pope, told me that 
when congratulating him upon arriv- 
ing at his ninetieth year, the Pope 
smiled, and said, " I shall live to be 
one hundred," and added, " theji we 
shall see." 

It is to the credit of Pope Leo 
XIII., that when he was recently ap- 
proached by a syndicate to take off 
his hands the manufacture of wines 
from the grapes grown in the gardens 
of the Vatican, of which he is fond, 
and offered, for the privilege of 



I/f 



1 86 Observations 

labelling it "Wine grown by Leo 
XIII.," to contribute an enormous 
sum to Peter's pence — much as he 
needs money for religious, charitable, 
and political projects, he scorned the 
idea. 

Two elements are always strug- 
gling for ascendency in the Romish 
Church — one is the religious, the 
other the political. Good Catholics 
differ among themselves whether the 
election of a religious or a political 
Pope will redound more to the ad- 
vancement and glory of the Church. 
The religious party, It is thought, will 
concentrate its votes on Cardinal 
Gotti, a Barefoot Carmelite monk 
from Genoa, distinguished for his 
learning and piety. The political 



Observations 187 

candidate will probably be either 
Cardinal Parocchi, the Vicar of 
Rome, or Cardinal Rampolli, the 
Papal Secretary of State. 

The three Governments, France, 
Austria, and Spain, have the right of 
veto in the selection of a Pope. The 
present Pope, Leo XIII., is a political 
Pope ; his predecessor was a religious 
Pope. The present Pope represents 
that great element in the Catholic 
Church which demands the restora- 
tion of the temporal power of the 
Pope ; in other words, that the city 
of Rome shall be governed and con- 
trolled by the Church, and that the 
Italian Government shall renounce all 
authority over the same. It is argued 
that the moral and political prestige 



1 88 Observations 

of the Church suffers as long as the 
Pope remains a prisoner in the Vati- 
can, and that the Church should 
have civil authority over the city of 
Rome, which has been its seat almost 
continuously now for two thousand 
years, and that it requires this au- 
thority to appropriately receive the 
religious and political embassies from 
all parts of the world. Every reli- 
gious order in the Catholic Church 
has its central organization at Rome, 
and the meetings, pilgrimages, and 
ceremonies, it Is claimed, are griev- 
ously hampered by a hostile civil 
authority. 

It Is the hope and prayer of every 
devout Catholic, that in some great 
upheaval In Europe, amid the clash 



Observations 189 

of arms and tottering thrones, and 
the destruction of poHtical dynasties, 
the Church may emerge triumphant 
over its enemies, and once more rule 
in Rome, as it did before the days of 
Victor Emmanuel and Garibaldi. So 
bitter is the feeling between the Cath- 
olic Church and the Italian Govern- 
ment, that Leo XIII. shuts himself 
up in the Vatican, and refuses to ac- 
cept the yearly allowance voted by 
the Italian Parliament, so that there 
is to-day nearly $20,000,000 to the 
credit of the Pope in the Italian 
Treasury, which he refuses to touch 
because, about 1870, the Italian Gov- 
ernment confiscated property belong- 
Inof to the Catholic Church to the 
value of $200,000,000, scattered the 



iQo Observations 

Popish army, and took the civil con- 
trol of Rome and vicinity out of the 
hands of the Romish Church. 

The Catholic Church embraces in 
its organization the concentrated 
wisdom of twenty centuries, and 
maintains, side by side, a political 
and a relio^ious org-anization without 
a peer in the world. The main hope 
and prop of the young Czar in his 
disarmament programme is the zeal- 
ous support he is receiving from the 
Pope. Catholicism is knit into the 
very fabric of society In Europe, and 
no government Is able to conduct Its 
affairs without either the political or 
the moral support of the Church, 
whether it has for Its head the Em- 
peror of Germany, the Emperor of 



Observations 191 

Austria, the King of Spain, the 
King of Belgium, the King of Italy, 
or the President of the French Re- 
public. 

Infidels may scoff, and agnostics 
may argue against all revealed reli- 
gion, but the mass of mankind and 
womankind will continue to worship 
the one living and true God. Wor- 
ship in Europe means something 
quite different from worship in Amer- 
ica. One may not endorse or join in 
all their ceremonies ; some of them, 
however, are so touching and pathetic 
that you can never quite forget 
them. 

One time I was at Monte Carlo, 
and witnessed a quaint ceremony at 
a little village near by. First in the 



192 Observations 

procession came a body of Roman 
guards, with drawn swords, carrying 
a blue banner ; after them came the 
Roman Governor and Judas Iscariot ; 
Pontius Pilate was washing his hands 
to emphasize his innocence ; then 
followed Christ, carrying his cross, 
followed by weeping women and 
children. This procession solemnly 
wound its way up the hill, amid thou- 
sands of silent spectators, just as the 
sun was setting behind the snow-clad 
Alps. The religious teachings of 
twenty centuries were thus crowded 
into that brief half-hour, and the re- 
membrance of that solemn scene will 
linger with me so long as life shall 
last. 

I attended recently, in Paris, the 



Observations 193 

Theatre Cirque d' Ete, and listened 
to an oratorio, " The Resurrection of 
Christ," written by a young ItaHan 
priest, Don Lorenzo Perosi. All 
Italy is resounding with the praises 
of this young priest. There was a 
full orchestra, and the personages 
comprised Christ, Mary Magdalene, 
the other Mary, Pilate, and two 
angels. There were solos for Christ 
and Mary, and a duet for the angels 
— a perfect gem. The orchestra was 
conducted by the young priest in his 
robes. He was recalled again and 
again, and modestly bowed his ac- 
knowledg-ments. 

Every boy and girl on the Conti- 
nent takes his or her first communion 
at ten years of age, and they are con- 



194 Observations 

firmed when twelve years old. It is a 
very pretty sight all over Europe to 
see the boys with their white and gold 
badges on the left arm, and the girls in 
white dresses, and long flowing white 
veils, walking along the streets or 
roadways, on their way to the church 
to be confirmed, accompanied by their 
friends. For two days before con- 
firmation they are allowed no food 
except a little bouillon. After con- 
firmation, and in fact after christ- 
enings, weddings, and funerals, it is 
customary to have refreshments at 
the house. 

Everything possible is done in 
Europe to symbolize the Christian 
religion. The magnificent cathedrals 
adorned with grand paintings ; the 



Observations 195 

chapels and monasteries crowning 
every hill ; the prayer crucifixes, 
which line every highway, and are 
often set in the front walls of private 
houses ; the strange religious proces- 
sions ; the Passion Play ; in these, 
and in a thousand ways, have the 
teachings of the Saviour been 
brought to the notice and rapt atten- 
tion of all mankind. 

It is not within my province to 
criticise or praise the Catholic Church. 
It has existed for twenty centuries, 
and I see no reason why it shall not 
continue to exist as long as man has 
need of its divine ministrations. The 
Church is human, has had some 
faults, and may have some yet. It 
has yet some differences to overcome. 



19^ Observations 

Archbishop Ireland says the Pope 
warned him not to allow the Jesuits 
to cret control of the Roman Catholic 
College at Washington. The Jesuits, 
that order in the Roman Catholic 
Church which made so much trouble 
in the eighteenth century that they 
were banished from Portugal, Spain, 
and France, condemned by Pope Cle- 
ment XIV. (1773), and expelled by 
Bismarck from Germany, advocate 
the absolute authority of the Pope in 
all matters of dogma and discipline. 
But remember, with all its faults and 
crimes, the Roman Catholic Church 
has carried aloft for two thousand 
years the banner of the Christian 
religion, preserved for us the writings 
of the disciples, and that without It 



Observations 197 

the teachings of Jesus Christ would 
have been lost amid the darkness 
of the Middle Ages. The Church is 
growing wiser and stronger as the 
years go by. It reads the same 
beautiful funeral service over king 
and beggar, it preaches the same 
Heaven for the millionaire and the 
pauper, and it promises Heaven only 
to those who repent and reform. It 
has soothed the death-bed of countless 
millions, and it has dispensed, and is 
to-day dispensing, relief to myriads of 
broken hearts, and without its sublime 
consolation of a Heaven beyond this 
mortal life, the world would be an 
aching void to the toiling masses in 
Europe. Ella Wheeler Wilcox, in a 
beautiful poem, says : 



198 Observations 

" This world is a vaporous jest at best, 
Tossed off by the gods in laughter ; 
And a cruel attempt at wit were it, 
If nothing better came after." 

The Roman Catholic Church, al- 
thougrh containing- five sixths of all 
the people professing Christianity on 
the Continent, no longer assumes to 
be (thanks largely to Americanism), 
the only Church of Christ on earth, 
but acknowledges the existence of 
other Christian churches, by whatever 
name they may be called, as co- 
workers in the great work of evangel- 
izing the world and spreading the 
Christian religfion ; each section of 
the Christian Church working in its 
own sphere ; each promulgating some 
of the vital truths of the religion of 



Observations 199 

Christ ; all worshipping the same 
God, and looking for ; salvation 
through the mediation of the same 
Saviour. The world moves, and 
religion moves with it. 



NINETEENTH LETTER 

T^H E entire population of the world, 
^ at the death of the Roman Em- 
peror Augustus, is estimated to have 
been a little over 54,000,000 ; the 
population of Europe before the dis- 
covery of America (1492) is estimated 
to have been about 50,000,000 ; to-day 
the population of Europe is 400,000,- 
000, and of the world 1,500,000,000. 
It is useless to speculate what will 
happen if this fearful increase contin- 
ues for another century, or two. 
" Sufficient unto the day is the evil 
thereof." 



Observations 201 

To-day the human race jostle and 
crowd each other, struggHng in 
swarms to secure a bare pittance. 
The milHons who have perished in 
Ireland from hunger in the past one 
hundred years ; the millions who 
have died, and the countless hordes 
still dying yearly in India, from 
famine, are cold matters of record, 
that seem to make no great impres- 
sion upon us. The population of 
Ireland in 1841 was 8,175,124, and 
in 1 89 1 4,704,750. In twenty years 
270,000 houses were levelled to the 
ground under England's beneficent 
rule ; there were in England and 
Wales alone, in 1891, 372,184 unin- 
habited houses; 2,500,000 people in 
India were receiving daily allowances 



202 Observations 

of food in 1898. There was In 1890 a 
great army of 2,407,580 registered 
paupers in the six countries, England, 
France, Germany, Russia, Austria and 
Italy ; and England alone had 780,451. 
Now comes the awful intelligence 
that thousands of people are dying 
from hunger in Russia, due to the 
failure of crops ; horses, cattle, and 
human beings dying together. Ten 
million persons are said to be in re- 
ceipt of charitable relief, which, how- 
ever, is of very insufficient character. 
Nearly a fourth of the whole area of 
European Russia, with a population 
of 25,000,000, is stricken. The Gov- 
ernment has set apart $22,000,000 
for relief, whereas her army and navy 
devour no less than $257,000,000 



Observations 203 

yearly. Yet there is enough in this 
world, and to spare, for every man, 
woman, and child. The curse of 
Russia, Ireland, and India is land- 
lordism ; a few men own all the land, 
and when the crops fail the peasants 
starve, and often die like rotten 
sheep. 

" Man's inhumanity to man 
Makes countless thousands mourn." 

The population of Europe groans 
under an expropriation of the na- 
tional wealth, the heritage of past 
ages, and dating back to Feudal times, 
when military conquest meant the 
wholesale confiscation of the goods 
and persons of a conquered people. 
But a financial revolution is ac- 
complishing In a lifetime In America, 



204 Observations 

through syndicates, trusts, and mo- 
nopolies, and the manipulation of 
public franchises, and the policy of 
" the public be damned " (as Wil- 
liam H. Vanderbilt said), what it 
has taken ten centuries to bring 
to pass in Europe. Only 20,000 
men out of the 250,000 voters in 
New York City pay any taxes ; 
31,000 men in the United States pos- 
sess one-half of all the wealth, or as 
much as the other 15,000,000 men, 
based on the census of 1890; 3074 
persons, or families, own as much as 
91 per cent, of the entire population 
of the United States or, to put it an- 
other way, on a basis of 70,000,000 
inhabitants, 4074 persons, or families, 
possess as much property as 63,000,- 



Observations 205 

000 people. History records no 
such rapid concentration of wealth in 
the hands of the few since Cain killed 
Abel, and one man commenced to 
"boss it" over another. Govern- 
ments in Europe, as well as in the 
United States, are thus becoming 
"governments by a few, for the few." 

It has been truly said : 

" The world has not seen, nor has 
the mind of man conceived of such 
miraculous wealth-p"atherinor- as are 

o o 

every-day tales to us. Aladdin's lamp 
is dimmed, and Monte Cristo be- 
comes commonplace when compared 
to our magicians of finance and 
trade." 

The Czar of Russia has an annual 
income of $12,000,000 ; the Emperor 



2o6 Observations 

of Austria, $4,000,000 ; the King of 
Italy, $3,000,000 ; the Emperor of 
Germany, $3,800,000 ; the King of 
Bavaria, a small province in Ger- 
many, $1,412,000; and poor Spain 
pays her boy King $2,000,000. The 
Queen of England and the royal 
family receive salaries amounting to 
$3,000,000 annually. 

These salaries, however, are but a 
drop in the bucket, if one only looks 
back through a series of years, and 
sees what history has charged against 
the accounts of most of these rulers, 
or their predecessors. Mulhall, the 
best living authority on statistics, 
says George III. cost England 
$4,000,000,000, and Napoleon III. 
cost France $2,024,000,000. 



Observations 207 

The people of Europe who are 
starving to death, or are toiling from 
the cradle to the grave to keep soul 
and body together, are not cheered 
by that silly poetry of Kipling's — 
they are looking and praying for a 
diviner poet, who will set forth the 
wronofs and the sufferinofs of the 
" white man," flesh of our flesh, and 
blood of our blood. They think over 
here the "white man" had burdens 
enough without taking any more on 
his shoulders. No German or Rus- 
sian poet would even dare to-day to 
write, as Kipling wrote, that line, 
" No iron rule of kino-s." Prison 
doors would open very quickly, and 
close, even more quickly, behind him. 
A renowned professor of Berlin Uni- 



2o8 Observations 

versity, Hans Delbruck, was recently 
fined 500 marks for commenting un- 
favorably upon the expulsion by the 
German Government of the Danes 
from Schleswig. German papers 
published a few days ago statistics 
giving stupendous figures of several 
thousands of years' imprisonment 
which German subjects had, in the 
aggregate, passed in prison during the 
last ten years, for having expressed 
themselves in disrespectful terms 
about the Emperor. A boy thirteen 
years old was tried the other day in 
Germany for a similar offence, " Maje- 
statsbeleidigung," as the term is. It 
ought to be a crime to have any such 
abominable word for ordinary mortals 
to pronounce. 



Observations 209 

Quite true it is that France, on the 
contrary, permits the most unlimited 
censure of the Government. Lately 
a distinguished French author wrote 
a book, The Army against the Na- 
twn, using these expressions : " The 
barracks is nothings but the school of 
unclean vices : of laziness, sneaking 
wipiidicit^, filthy debauchery, moral 
cowardice, and drunkenness. If 
these old men, upon whose sleeves 
stars grow as moss grows upon old 
benches, were capable of as much 
strategy in the field as of trickery in 
the offices, we should have no need 
of the Russian alliance." After a long 
trial, in which much testimony was 
taken, the writer was acquitted of 
any criminal liability, and the judge 



2IO Observations 

said he had rendered a pubHc service 
by writing as he did. It is because 
of the unbridled Hcense of the press 
in France that foreicrners form an un- 
just and unfavorable impression as 
to the real stability of the French 
Government. 

It is undoubtedly true that the evils 
under which the people of Europe 
groan are so embedded into their sys- 
tems of government that nothing less 
than a revolution, and an upheaval of 
society, will ever bring adequate relief. 

Thomas Jefferson wrote from Paris 
to President Washington in 1793, 
soon after the execution of Louis 
XVI. and Marie Antoinette, giving a 
list of all the ancient abuses which 
the Revolution had abolished, and 



Observations 211 

under which the people of France 
had groaned for a century or more, 
and added, " My own affections have 
been deeply wounded by some of the 
martyrs to this cause ; but rather 
than it should have failed, I would 
have seen half the earth desolated. 
Were there but an Adam and an 
Eve left in every country, and left 
free, it would be better than it 
now is." 

Charitable people are often so 
wickedly imposed upon in Europe by 
the " fake " beggars, that after a while 
every one seems to grow very hard- 
hearted, and refuses to distinguish 
between the deserving and undeserv- 
ing poor. Mendicity Is a profession 
on the Continent ; beggars and im- 



212 Observations 

posters are almost synonymous terms. 
It was disclosed by a recent in- 
vestigation made on the part of the 
Government, that there are several 
professors in Paris who teach these 
impostors how to gaze at passers-by 
with white and apparently sightless 
eyes ; artificial stumps of legs and 
arms can be hired for one franc a 
day ; to cap the climax, there are 
books of addresses containing the 
names of charitable persons, one for 
five, another for fifteen francs, on the 
title page of which it says, " You will 
be able to live a year without apply- 
ing twice to the same person." This 
is reducing begging to a system. It 
is proposed to pass a law forbidding 
begging, and it is said that the 



Observations 213 

mendicants will then resort to the 
hand-organ, which will prove a greater 
nuisance than even the plain, every- 
day, common beggar. 



TWENTIETH LETTER 

nPHERE are many pleasant, and 

* many unpleasant things about 

a trip to Europe. You don't want a 

storm at sea. If any one says that 

he enjoys a storm, a hurricane on 

the ocean, I put him down as half a 

brute. Sea-sickness is a disturbance 

of the nerve centres, and the more 

delicate the organization, the more 

likely is sea-sickness. The North 

American Indian was never known 

to suffer from this trouble, while 

Darwin, the great scientist, never 

recovered from the sea-sickness under 
214 



Observations 2 1 5 

which he suffered on his trip to South 
America. H is stomach never got over 
the long-continued wrenching. 

Don't Hsten to people who have 
nostrums to give you, or who ad- 
vise you to stay on deck and fight 
it out. Lie down on your back, 
drink a little iced champagne with 
a cracker, and give your stomach 
and nervous system a chance to as- 
similate themselves to the motion of 
the ship. I shall never forget the 
advice of an old sea captain, who, 
early in life, told me at sea, " Keep 
your bowels open, young man, and 
never talk of bad weather until you 
are in the midst of it." 

It is not nearly so warm in Europe 
as in America. The thermometer 



2i6 Observations 

rarely goes above 80° Fahrenheit 
in the shade. Sunstrokes and thun- 
der-storms are a rarity. 

The people are more affable 
than in the United States. You 
are sure of getting a pretty good 
meal at even the most out-of-the- 
way hotels. There is no such 
rush here as with us. Everybody 
takes it easy. An Englishman told 
me he once called on a lace manu- 
facturer on the Continent and found 
the latter just going out to his 
noon meal. Although expecting to 
buy ;^5ooo or ^6000 worth of laces, 
and most anxious to get away that 
night to London, the manufacturer 
would not postpone his breakfast, 
and he told his customer to come 



Observations 217 

back at 3 p.m, if he wished to 
buy. 

It is very expensive living in Eu- 
rope. If anybody says he can Hve 
cheaper here than in America, then 
you may conchide he does not Hve 
in great hixury at home. At the 
Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York, or 
any similar hotel kept on the Ameri- 
can plan, you can board much more 
comfortably than you can for double 
the money at any hotel or pension in 
Europe. 

The curse of travelingf or livinof 
in Europe is the pourboire, or fee 
nuisance. It is with you in the 
morning when you first get up, it fol- 
lows you all day long, like a pestifer- 
ous fly, and only leaves you when 



2i8 Observations 

you are sound asleep in your bed, 
with your door locked. When you 
leave the hotel the bell is often rung, 
and the whole force stands out in 
line by the door, — the porter, the 
baggage man (chances are there will 
be two of them), the waiter, the 
bathman, the bootblack, and the 
chambermaid, every one smiling, 
with hands out for a franc or a mark, 
and blessings or suppressed curses will 
follow you according as you fee them. 
If you go to a barber shop, besides 
paying for the shave you must pay 
four cents into the "pour" box. In 
some barber shops the fee is all the 
wages the workmen receive. If you 
go to a bath-house a tip is expected ; 
if you hire a cab a tip is demanded 



Observations 219 

as a matter of right, and so it . is 
continuously. If anybody does any- 
thing for you he expects some pres- 
ent for it. If you send your servant 
to the butcher's, baker's, or grocer's 
the servant expects and gets a com- 
mission from the merchant. If a 
merchant sends a package to your 
house, the person who brings it ex- 
pects a fee. If you hire a courier 
or valet he gets a commission of 
five per cent, from the hotel on 
the amount of your bill unbeknown 
to you. No landlord dares refuse 
to pay this commission for fear the 
courier or valet will divert the cus- 
tomers to other hotels. If a oruide 
goes with you shopping he will go 
back afterwards, and demand, and get, 



220 Observations 

his commission on your purchases. 
If you visit in a private family, no 
matter how rich, you are expected to 
fee the servants, chambermaid, and 
coachman. They charge you not 
only for what you eat at a restaurant, 
but also for the use of the napkins, 
dishes, etc. They charge you extra 
for the candles in your bedroom, and 
rush in ahead of you, and light them 
all. The charge is twenty cents a 
person for each day. They will put 
In fresh ones every morning whether 
you need them or not. Some eco- 
nomical travellers fill their bags 
with the unused candles, and when 
they go to a new place forbid the 
maid to liorht the candles In the room. 
They will charge extra for the 



Observations 221 

chambermaid who cares for your 
room, until you are Hterally bled in 
every move you make. 

It all goes well so long as you pay 
liberally, and are not ill, but woe be 
unto you if severe sickness overtakes 
you. A friend, Mr. Beal, formerly 
one of the proprietors of the Bos- 
ton Post, told me he was traveling 
with his wife a few years since on the 
Continent, and she was taken with 
the smallpox. The soldiers came to 
the hotel, carried her away to the 
hospital, and he was never permitted 
to see her again. Every day a soldier 
brouofht him word that she was bet- 
ter or worse, until in about two 
weeks they brought him word that 
she was dead and buried. 



222 Observations 

An American lady came to Cannes 
with her husband, who was suffering 
from consumption, and stayed at one 
of the leading hotels. He lingered a 
few days, and then died. She was 
weeping at his bedside, holding his 
hand, life had hardly left his body, 
when in walked the gendarmes, or 
what we know as policemen, and 
took his body away to the Church, 
where it could remain until buried. 
She was obliged, as are all people, 
to pay the hotel for every article of 
furniture in the room where her hus- 
band died, besides other enormous 
charges. At the same time the fur- 
niture will probably remain in the 
hotel, and be used by other guests the 
very next day. 



Observations 223 

And still, for all these drawbacks, it 
is probable that there is no spot on 
this planet so comfortable to live, 
and where one can get as much com- 
fort out of life as on the Continent of 
Europe. 

In the eighties, I met in Paris a 
gentleman born in Danbury, Con- 
necticut, and who subsequently lived 
in Chicago, where he accumulated a 
large fortune. I asked him when he 
was going back to the United States, 
and he replied he thought never. I 
asked him why. He said that, al- 
though he did not speak a word of 
French, he expected to finish his days 
here with his wife and daug-hter. 
That he went back to America about 
three years before, and called on his 



2 24 Observations 

old friends in Chicago, and elsewhere, 
and they were all so glad to see him, 
and invited him to sit down. In 
about five minutes every one asked 
to be excused to answer a telegram, 
or to attend to some business, or to 
see some man, and he did not find a 
man in all United States to talk with 
over five minutes. He concluded 
that in America a man mio-ht as well 
be dead as to be out of business. 

If you have the means to live with- 
out work, the Continent Is surely the 
place to live. There is a certain 
fascination about the life. Coffee, 
and rolls, and eggs, in your bed at 
eight o'clock, breakfast at noon, and 
a good hour or two eating it ; dinner 
at six or seven o'clock, and for six 



Observations 225 

months eaten mostly In the open 
air. 

In Germany they have only one 
good meal a day, and that is at noon, 
and the rest is a pick-up, a cold meal, 
mostly at cafes or beer-gardens. 
But what the German lacks in food 
he makes up in beer. I know a Ger- 
man tutor who used to drink from 
twenty-five to twenty-eight glasses of 
beer at a sitting, and there are many 
like him. Last year the consump- 
tion of beer in Berlin reached the 
enormous figures of 67,639,000 gal- 
lons or on an average for every adult 
man and woman of 180 quarts a year. 



TWENTY-FIRST LETTER 

T^ROUVILLE is the most fash- 
■* ionable watering-place in France, 
and, next to Ostend, in Europe. It 
is an interesting and curious place to 
an American. The beach is lined 
with little houses on wheels, which 
you enter, don your bathing suit, and 
are drawn by horses out into the 
ocean, where you take your swim. 
But the vast majority of the people 
seem to prefer to wade in the surf 
rather than to swim. So men, wo- 
men, and children will pull their 

clothes as high up around their waists 
226 



Observations 227 

as possible, and wade for hours in the 
salt water. The front row at a ballet 
is a tame affair beside the sights you 
see at a French watering-place. 

The time and place determines so 
largely what is proper. A lot of As- 
bury Park bathers, parading through 
Central Park in their bathing cos- 
tumes, would throw into conniption 
fits all the saints and half the sinners 
in New York City. A line of half- 
enclosed public urinals, scattered 
along Broadway and Fifth Avenue, 
would shock the sensibilities of ev- 
erybody, and still this is what you 
see all over Europe. 

I was amused while visiting the 
flower market to see for sale great 
bunches of our wild, wayside, hated 



2 28 Observations 

thistle blossom, and they did look 
pretty. I asked what flower that was 
and they said it was a wild mountain 
flower for which they had a great sale. 

Walking one day in the Palm Gar- 
den at Frankfort a.-M, I was amused 
to see a crowd about a plant, and 
stopped to see what it was. I found 
it labeled " American Velvet Plant," 
but it was our common New England 
mullein. In many parks and private 
grounds you will see the rhubarb 
plant used as an ornament ; also the 
white birch tree is much in vogue. 

You will be astonished to see in all 
French markets at this season of the 
year such quantities of green walnuts 
and hazelnuts. They will be found 
almost daily at very many restau- 



Observations 229 

rants, and at most well-provided 
private tables. The French claim 
they are much more digestible green 
than when ripe, or dry, as we eat 
them. 

You will look aghast at the way 
parents give wine in France, and beer 
in Germany, to their children and 
even to babies, little tots that can 
hardly walk. He is called a very 
mean man who has a glass of wine in 
France, or a mug of beer in Ger- 
many, and fails to give his children a 
sip out of the same glass. 

Children after a certain age, say ten 
years, are separated, the boys being 
sent to a schoolhouse of their own 
and the girls likewise. The children 
go to school at 8 a.m., and, if the 



230 Observations 

parents are poor and request it, the 
children are kept in until 6 p.m., 
otherwise they are dismissed at 

4 P.M. 

You soon become disgusted, when 
you visit Europe, with the poodle 
nuisance. I cannot call it anything 
else. I never sleep in a strange bed 
that I don't imagine that possibly a 
woman and her nasty dog slept 
there the night before. The way 
French and English women hug, kiss, 
and fondle their miserable, unsightly, 
eyeless poodles is simply disgusting. 
Twenty per cent, of the aristocracy 
of England have no children, and 
seem to prefer raising Japanese pugs, 
now all the rage. Only recently 
they had a show in London devoted 



Observations 231 

exclusively to these contemptible 
Japanese poodles. 

I beg of you not to infer from any- 
thing that I have written, or that you 
have read elsewhere, that the French 
are the most immoral people in the 
world. If foreigners (the Germans, 
Russians, Spaniards, English, and 
Americans) were excluded from Paris 
one year, immorality would starve 
to death there. As a rule the mass 
of the French people are sober, 
virtuous, industrious, and saving. 
Everybody is busy. Even by the 
roadside one sees little children knit- 
ting, and you rarely see an old lady 
sit down without some work in her 
hands. Out of every thousand births 
in Germany 141 are illegitimate, in 



232 Observations 

Sweden, loi, in Austria, 147, while in 
France, 84. 

According to a record kept by the 
Chicago Tribiine, the number of 
homicides in the United States in the 
ten years prior to 1895 was 48,834 
(just think of it!), the number of 
legal executions, 1030, and of lynch- 
ings, 1655. In the same ten years 
there were in France 6620 homi- 
cides, less than fifty executions, and 
no lynchings. 

A few days ago, if you had been 
with me at the Orleans station in 
Paris you would have seen a sight 
not to be witnessed at any other 
place on the globe. There were 
fourteen trains, each containing 500 
passengers bound for Lourdes, in the 



Observations 233 

South of France. All classes of so- 
ciety were represented, and not a few 
bore noble names. A large propor- 
tion of the pilgrims were invalids, 
paralytics, consumptives, and suffer- 
ers from all kinds of diseases. They 
go to visit a church built over a cave 
in which the Virgfin is said to have 
appeared in 1858. It was calculated 
that 60,000 pilgrims would assemble 
at Lourdes that week, as that was the 
time fixed by the Church for the an- 
nual pilgrimage. Who says that the 
age of faith is dead ? Why not be- 
lieve in the miracles there transpiring 
each year, as well as in those other 
miracles said to have been performed 
two thousand years ago on the hills 
of Judea? One is done under your 



234 Observations 

own eyes, while the verity of the 
other depends largely upon tradition 
and hearsay evidence. 

Perhaps you have been to St. 
Anne, Canada, just below Quebec, 
and seen that pile of crutches, twenty 
to thirty feet high, thrown away by 
pilgrims who were cured at that 
famous shrine. It is almost useless 
to cavil when you witness these mi- 
raculous things yourself. Every one 
has the right of explaining these 
superhuman events as they choose. 

In conclusion, I want you to think 
kindly of the French people, the only 
nation in Europe that has no aris- 
tocracy, and where every man is 
born free and equal before the law. 
Without their assistance, the Lion 



Observations 235 

would be floating over every Govern- 
ment building In America, Instead of 
the Stars and Stripes, and your chil- 
dren would be singing " God Save 
the Queen," and not the " Battle 
Hymn of the Republic." Never swap 
an old friend for a new one. They 
sent us 10,000 trained soldiers and 
a magnificent navy, loaned us large 
sums of money, and made the Ameri- 
can Republic a possibility. Without 
their assistance George Washington 
would have been shot as a rebel, and 
the Continental army deported to a 
worse than a Dry Tortugas. No 
grander figure has appeared in Eu- 
ropean or American history than La- 
fayette, the friend of Washington and 
of America. 



TWENTY-SECOND LETTER 

TT seems good to be back once more 
in London, where everyone speaks 
the "mother tongue." It is impossi- 
ble to forget England was the birth- 
place and home of Shakespeare, the 
dramatist ; of Byron, the poet ; of 
Burke, the orator ; the three greatest 
men of the Anglo-Saxon, or any race, 
in their respective departments. A 
thousand links of blood and interest 
connect us with the hated inhabitants 
of these green islands, for not a na- 
tion anywhere loves them, and all the 
world would rejoice with Satanic 
236 



Observations 237 

glee, at their overthrow. Their 
grasping disposition, their land-steal- 
ing operations, have disgusted every 
one. 

China would have just as much 
justification in making war upon 
America because we refuse citizen- 
ship, or even entrance of her citizens 
to the United States, as the English 
have in making war upon the Boers. 
It is her eternal, overriding, grasping 
despotism that rules and has ruled in 
her counsels for two hundred years. 
The mill of the gods grinds slowly, 
but it is to be hoped that some day, 
somewhere, she will get her just 
deserts. ' 

In talkinor with an Eno-Hshman a 
few days ago, I told him of a remark 



238 Observations 

made by a little English girl, which I 
happened to overhear at Geneva. 
She said, laughingly, to her American 
playmate, "We English are always 
grabbing," and my English friend 
said, " Yes, the girl was right, and an 
Englishman never drops anything 
that he once gets hold of, except, 
perhaps, his h's." 

Hon. John Morley, the brightest 
Liberal statesman in England to-day, 
says, "The Imperial policy will in 
the end prove England's ruin." Many 
of her colonies are of no value and 
never will be ; they only drain the 
treasury, and the best blood of the 
country, and are constantly embroil- 
ing England with the other powerful 
nations of the globe. Against a 



Observations 239 

combination of any two or three lead- 
ing governments, she could not, 
and never expects to be able to, de- 
fend dominions, so vast, so scattered, 
and, many of them, so indefensible 
and unprotected. 

While the Englishman may boast 
that the commerce of the world re- 
volves around London, let him not 
forget that she produces only enough 
food to support her inhabitants for 
five and one-half months ; and that 
at the end of a six months' siege, if 
persistently and successfully carried 
out, her own people would begin to 
die, like rats in a vat, from starvation. 

Let him remember that two thirds 
of England, nine tenths of Ireland, 
and nineteen twentieths of Scotland, 



240 Observations 

are owned by a small group of land- 
lords, and, according to Mulhall, a 
standard English authority, the land- 
owners and farmers have lost in cap- 
ital, on account of competition with 
America, Australia, and Argentina, 
since 1880, $2,250,000,000, or over 
$ 1 50,000,000 yearly. 

Let him remember that the average 
product per hand in the United States 
is three times as great as in Europe, 
and has a value four times as great. 
Let him remember that the coal-fields 
of Pennsylvania exceed in territory 
all France, and, while it is estimated 
that Engrland's coal-fields will be ex- 
hausted in 230 years, that there is 
enough coal in the United States to 
supply the world for several centuries. 



Observations 241 

Let him remember that a Httle 
more than a century ago not more 
than 13,000 persons in all England 
wore stockings ; that all persons 
were forbidden to wear clothes made 
abroad ; that it was commanded 
to bury each corpse in a woollen 
shroud ; that all woollen factories 
in Ireland were closed by Parlia- 
ment in 1690; that these infamous 
laws were not all repealed until a 
very few years ago, and that all this 
was done in order to foster English 
factories. 

Let him remember that Ireland 
has, ever since George 11. , been in 
a chronic state of misery, owing to 
England's barbarous legislation, and 
that even now each inhabitant lives, 



242 Observations 

on an average, on seven cents a 
day. 

Let him remember that there are 
1,638,000 land-owners in France, and 
only 19,275 in the United Kingdom. 
Let him remember that the support 
of the paupers of the United King- 
dom requires an annual expenditure 
of $60,000,000, or $1.50 to each in- 
habitant, (This is far in excess of 
any other civilized country.) The 
United States expends $2,500,000 
for the support of her paupers 
yearly, an expenditure of four cents 
to each inhabitant. 

Let him remember that the 
United States produces one third 
of the food product of the world ; let 
him remember that, by careful calcu- 



Observations 243 

lation, 70,000,000 Americans repre- 
sent as much working power, and 
accomplish as much each day, as 
150,000,000 Europeans; let him re- 
member that to-day England has 
more paupers to each 1000 inhab- 
itants than any other civilized nation 
on the globe ; let him remember that 
for a thousand years England has 
beaten her way over the world, as 
a snow-plow engine forces itself 
through great snowdrifts, regardless 
of what may be in the drift. 

Let him remember that the 
United States, in one hundred years, 
will have 300,000,000 inhabitants, 
and that but one other power has 
the land and facilities of equal 
growth, or ability to support such an 



244 Observations 

immense population, and that is Rus- 
sia, the great unknown and unsolva- 
ble problem of the future. 

America and Russia possess the 
best part of the temperate zone on 
either hemisphere, — the natural home 
of the Caucasian race, — and as Glad- 
stone said, " Out of the womb of time 
are eventually to be evolved the two 
mightiest nations the world has ever 
seen — America and Russia," 

England and her colonies can 
boast only 60,000,000 whites, while 
Russia, with her enormous strides 
within the last forty years, to-day has 
a population of 110,000,000 whites; 
America has about 56,000,000 whites, 
per census of 1890. 

Nearly every office in the Estab- 



Observations 245 

lished Church of England is a po- 
Htical sinecure, the same as the 
post-offices in America, except that 
private persons have the right to 
appoint about 10,000 clergymen to 
these endowed, or privileged, churches 
— benefices, as they are called. Near- 
ly every vacancy in the Church, from 
the Archbishopric of Canterbury to 
the curacy of the humblest parish in 
England, is filled by the political 
party then in power, generally by 
some avowed champion of its po- 
litical principles, or by one of the 
10,000 persons (some of them of 
most dissolute character), holding 
the right of appointing the clergy- 
men to their respective parishes, a 
system repugnant to the moral sen- 



246 Observations 

sibilities of this age, and a worthy 
invention only of a Roman pagan. 

A few nights ago, I sat in the 
Strangers' Gallery of the House of 
Commons, and listened to these 
burning words, from one of Glad- 
stone's old associates, in opposition 
to a pending " tithing bill " in aid of 
the Episcopal Church: "The bill 
provides relief for the suffering 
Clergy of the richest religious com- 
munity in the civilized world, by a 
draft to be levied, without regard 
either to creed or means, on the 
whole body of the taxpayers of the 
nation." And this in a nation which 
pretends to lead the world in the 
march of civilization ! 

Another member of Parliament 



Observations 247 

said : " Parishioners could not even 
dismiss their Clergyman. They took 
him, like the weather, as a great nat- 
ural and mysterious fact. If he was 
brigrht and cheerful, well and sfood ; 
if he was dull and drizzling he must 
be put up with. He was an ap- 
pointee of the Government." 

We little appreciate the benefits of 
the free institutions of America until 
we travel abroad. The hopes of 
mankind for the next one thousand 
years are centred in the triumph of 
American institutions, 

" The last, best hope of mankind," 

over any other system of government 
in existence to-day. 

Well might Jefferson — in many re- 
spects the most profound statesman 



248 Observations 

the world has seen in twenty centu- 
ries, — wish to have engraven on his 
monument at Monticello that he was 
'' author of the act separating Church 
from State." A thoughtful person, 
traversing Europe, can but wonder 
whether there would be any, and, if 
any how much, religious devotion, if 
the Church (the Established Church 
of England, the Greek Church of 
Russia, the Roman Catholic Church 
of many Continental countries), were 
compelled to depend upon the gifts of 
its followers, and not upon the public 
treasury ; and, again, if the ever 
present crucifix, pictures, and sym- 
bols of Christ, and His sufferings on 
the cross, were banished, and all 
religions made to depend solely upon 



Observations 249 

the teachings of the Clergy, and 
the intelHgent faith and benefactions 
of its behevers. Even RepubHcan 
France, atheistic as she is called, and 
ruled by the Free Masons, as it is 
claimed, appropriates annually from 
the public treasury over 40,000,000 
francs for the support of the Catholic 
Clergy. 

An intelligent Catholic prelate, 
Archbishop Ireland, who has been in 
Europe the past winter, and made 
some addresses, is several centuries 
in advance of the average European 
clergyman. 

He is thus assailed in a leading 
Continental Catholic paper : " The 
American bishop recently came to 
Europe as the commercial traveler 



250 Observations 

of revolutionary ideas. A real scan- 
dal was caused by this successor of 
the Apostles congratulating France 
upon having become a Free Masonic 
Republic. Many prelates look upon 
Mcrr. Irelanci as a savao-e. He 
has been thoroughly described as a 
' bombshell.' " 

It is only a little over two thou- 
sand miles from America to Europe, 
but there is nearly two thousand 
years' difference between the political 
and religious institutions of the two 
hemispheres. 



95 



CONCLUSION. 

IF the reader of this httle book has 
* found aught of amusement or 
instruction, however trifling, I shall 
feel fully paid for having dared to 
commit my rambling thoughts to the 
public. 

Its composition has helped me 
while away what might otherwise 
have been lonely hours. That every- 
body will agree with what I have 
written I do not expect. The best 
of us take only partial views of life 
and its surroundings. 

In closing I can truly say, what 
one of England's great bards has said, 

" Where'er we roam, 
His first, best country ever is at home." 

FINIS. 

251 






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